Vitra Design Museum shows exhibition on robot design
The Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein (Germany), near Basel, is dedicating a new special exhibition to robot design and the boom in robotics. More than 200 exhibits will be on display starting Saturday.
The exhibition "Hello, Robot. Design between man and machine", the Vitra Design Museum announced that robots from the home and care sector as well as industry are on display. Computer games, media installations and examples from film and literature are also on display. The overview exhibition thus shows how diverse robotics is today.
With digitalization, robotics has undergone a "radical redefinition" in the past decade. Robots no longer just assemble cars and washing machines or transport passengers in self-driving trains. They are appearing in other forms, such as communicating household appliances or self-learning computer programs known as bots.
According to the museum, this change means that, in addition to engineers and computer experts, designers are also playing a key role in the robotics boom. The latter often decide how and where people encounter robots and how they interact with them or vice versa. Be it in everyday life, in care, as a digital companion or during cybersex.
Incapacitation of the human being? However, the exhibition also wants to broaden the view to ethical, social and political questions. The spread of robotics has been observed with ambivalence for decades. Then as now, the debate fluctuates between the hope of a better, technologized world and the fear of human incapacitation.
Visitors are guided through the exhibition on the basis of 14 key questions. These range from "Have you ever met a robot?" to "Do you trust robots?" and "Do you think your job could be taken over by a robot?" to "Will robots take the lead in evolution?".
The "Elytra Filament Pavilion" is also set up outside the museum. The pavilion is the result of four years of research. The individual modules of the bionic roof construction were defined by an algorithm and produced using an industrial robot. For the "Hello, Robot" exhibition, the Vitra Design Museum has collaborated with the MAK - Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art in Vienna and the Design Museum in Ghent, Belgium. It runs until May 14.
