The basic concept of this project is to do just that - to provide a physical device that people can 'posess'. The device awaits for you to funnel an aspect of your being into it - thus animating it in a real physical space. However, your experience with the robot is not real-life, the experience transmitted is ghost-like: low-bandwidth and slightly surreal. Similarly, only a specific part of your being can be transfered through the movements of the device into the physical space.
After considering these viewpoints, the term doppelänger seemed to made sense - it embodied part of the conceptual framework that I wanted to engage with.
First of all, the idea of a 'webcam' was first implemented in the U.K. with the The Trojan Coffee Pot, the classic 'cult' webcam that actually preceded 'the web'. This is simply a picture of a coffee pot that is live - updated once every few minutes and made for the whole world to view.
Soon a number of
webcams started to go up online - images of offices, labs, etc - many of
which are currently listed under The Web Voyeur. After
cameras were connected to the net, individuals and groups began to connect
other physical de vices to the internet. For a list of sites which list
similar projects, visit :
As far as
ARTISTS using web-telerobotics, I do not believe that
many
artists to date (late 1995) have used the medium. Although telerobotics,
webcams, and machinery have been used, web-telerobotics appears largely
untouched.