MarionetteBot

Taking the real world into digital back into the real world with a mix of true digital and true analogue technology – installations don’t get much better than this IMHO. Also, it’s another twist on how to explore your wardrobe using Kinect – we’ve seen some pretty good Kinect fashion mirrors but my issue with them has always been how it’s not really a true representation of the clothing or yourself.

I’ve not yet seen a fashion mirror that is believable and so as technologists, we need to recognise that. This is partly down to computing power simply not yet being up to the challenge of rendering real 3D representations of us or the clothes in real time. So in the same way that avatars on the Xbox are a powered down representation of ourselves, this MarionetteBot is a powered down representation of a fashion mirror. And it works. Brilliantly. Isn’t the point of a fashion mirror to see how clothing lies on your body when you’re posing and falls around with you when you’re moving? MarionetteBot does the job – it brings the focus back onto the clothing, not onto you.

I’d like to see this taken a step further and used in theatre. I imagine that there’s some purist puppeteers who would say that the movements can only be carried out using hands but aren’t they just translating body movement, and is there a more natural translation of body movement, than body movement?