how Dirk came to life

dirk prototype

prototype, 2004

dirk rise

Dirk growing

Dirk gets a body

Dirk gets personality

Text based on an interview related to anthropomorphism in performance art and robotics.

'How do I set the elements making Dirk realistic?

*1. First of all the walking: I have put the most time in the walking-mechanism. It was important to me that the walking was real. I could have made it very easy and just put a motor on one of the shopping-trolley wheels. But now the walking looks real because it is real. It's actually the only part of the robot with an autonomous aspect because the leg-movement is determent by 4 disks; the shape of the disks is the 'software' The pressure of the feet is set on a max of 14 kg. And therefore adjusts to the street surface.
*2. The head movement: The head-servos are strong and precisely mounted without any play or vibration and have rapid reaction. All proportions are carefully reproduced (with my own body as an example *) the degree of freedom and the angle of the joints are also set with a lot of care.
*3. We are both puppeteers and have been training to work the remote control for years now. We somehow learned to control two joysticks with one hand leaving the other hand free for 'acting' For some mysterious reason we are both using our left hand for the joy sticks (we are both right-handed!) Several functions are combined to fit all the functions on just two joysticks.'




'Why a homeless?

It started with a mechanized string-puppet that was waiting in a corner of my workshop for me to tackle the balance problem of walking on two legs. The moment I got the idea to solve the balance problem with a shopping trolley it was clear to me that it just hat to be a homeless. Maybe also to provoke the general idea of a robot to always be shiny and perfect. The idea of a robot without a home appealed to me.'

'The Dutch word for homeless is "zwerver" that means something as 'wanderer', the word 'zwerver' has something romantic to it someone free and in-depended (more positive than homeless or tramp)

A funny effect is that people do not want to look at a tramp, the want to avoid him. But as you know this tramp is rather different and it does attract people attention. Its a quite strong experience for the audience to be confronted with there own preconception and find out the are not looking at a tramp but at a robot. All of the show is build around this experience I think this is a premiere, I newer talked to anyone who ever had that experience before. I read somewhere the people use an other part of the brain to look at an object rather than a human. The moment of switching between those brain-parts seems to be a unique experience.

I have to tell you that at one point in the project we stopped making Dirk more and more realistic The reason for that was that the performance was not getting any better because the audience did not realize at all that what they were looking at was a robot!

We travel to many countries with dirk and it is an interesting psychological study on the behaviour of people from sudden countries or groups and how people behave differently in different surroundings.

* The face is not mine; it's a cast of the face of a friend with a very good drinking nose (the hands are mine).'
Fred Abels