Artist Momoyo Torimitsu's (website sound alert) Japanese businessman crawling robot "Miyata Jiro" isn't brand new, but the discovery of the video of her running her creepy art machine live on the streets in downtown Syndey, Australia last year is too fantastic to pass up for a post. Torimitsu intended "Miyata Jiro" (originally created in New York, 1997) to be "a symbol of the Japan's rigid Salaryman culture" and runs as an autonomous robotic businessman crawling on all fours. What I find so fascinating is a) that she performs her robot situationalist piece in tradition full nurse uniform whites and b) that the battery on the machine is encased in the businessman's ass. Watch, and I hope you enjoy watching her do on-the-spot repairs as much as I do... I'd love to see her run this on Wall Street now.
Just over a year ago, the talented Japanese female robotic artist also exhibited at the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi with a piece called "Horizons," which was an installation of 100 robotic GI Joes with American, Japanese, and European faces wearing business suits and crawling all over a map of the world. I'd love to see her "Pleasure of Destruction Merry-Go-Round" (1995), featuring resin-cast sculptures of two high-school girls in sailor uniforms on their hands and knees alternating with two white goats on a red turntable. Actually functional as a merry-go-round, the sculptures were offered for visitors to ride. (thanks, EvilSigntist!)
