Variations More

Anyway. A few years ago the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA) re-started an Art and Technology program that had slipped under the waves in the early 70's. So I hacked and hewed a proposal to make a set of robot arms that Learned to Dance.  I called the work Variations For as a pun on John Cage's, Variations IV, the canonical recording of which was made in LA in the mid-60's

Variations For Proposal

tldr; The arms solved the problem of knowing their own orientation and could just as well use the same sort of algorithms as my RoboCars to create a sequence of motions -- Teach Themselves to Dance -- AND could be influenced by viewer input via video. Plus the LACMA program was set up to put artists together with technological support -- which I could, certainly, use. That and money to pay for stuff...

Due to my obvious lack of Charm, Cachet, Credential, and Competence, they wisely declined my proposal. It was however a high point of my applying for things because I got BOTH an acknowledgement of receipt AND a politely encouraging rejection letter.

Funnily(?) enough. A couple years ago I ran across another artist who had subsequently applied for the same program with a proposal (in my loose interpretation) to make video game characters able to determine their own next moves rather than always having pre-programmed responses. Since he clearly was in possession of all the above 'C' qualities his project was accepted, and I noticed a recent announcement of some show of something in progress, up on which I did not follow.