Roboexotica 2008 Photos

The tenth annual Roboexotica festival for robotic cocktail culture organized by monochrom and SHIFZ is in full swing here in Vienna, Austria where I’ve been for the last month. The big kick off party on Thursday night started in front of RoboVox, a 25 foot future deco style robot that speaks SMS messages sent to it.

The crowd marched into the Freiraum at the Museumsquartier where the main event was getting started. There are maybe 20 or so cocktail robot installations, some of which include Robomoji, the old standby industrial mojito maker, Bre Pettis’ Cherrytron 2000 robotic arms controlled by retro Atari 2600 joysticks and a beautiful machine of brass, glass, tubes and bubbling liquids called the BRAGOFON-STVOL-DISTILLATOR «LIQUIDATOR» by Russian artist mikhael a crest sator.

Some of the interesting interactive bots were created by students of the Joanneum Applied Media Sciences University. The Construction Wanker is a cocktail maker that works by punching holes in a card, inserting it into a slot, pulling a lever and then collecting a drink that the Construction Wanker pees into your cup. Another is a beautiful piano with a dozen or so liquors and mixers connected that randomly mix based on how one tickles the keys. Gina the cocktail cow drew quite the crowd. She’s attended by two milk maids that help the prospective drinker milk Gina’s udders to squirt out a gin & tonic. The maids then help you to retrieve ice from inside Gina by gloving up a hand and inserting it deep into Gina’s pink puckered anus. Austrian students have all the fun.

San Francisco is represented well this year with CTP’s Rim Shot Bot, Kal Spelletich’s Sloth, Jonathan Foote & Al Honig’s Chassis and Mitch Heinrich’s & David Fine‘s Fairy Juicer.

Roboexotica is not complete without monochrom’s Taugshow which took place at the hackerspace Metalab on Friday night. Inventor of TV-B-Gone Mitch Altman, Bre Pettis, Krach the Robot and myself were featured guests.

Monochrom has also come out with their 10 year Roboexotica retrospective anthology now available at Amazon.