Wired: Bot Bartenders Sling Drinks at Roboexotica USA
Wired's Jenna Wortham reports about Roboexotica USA. Great pics.
Aficionados of alcohol and androids alike celebrated the first stateside gathering of cocktail-serving robots this weekend at Roboexotica.
Patrons delighted in drink-making droids that ranged from a fire-spewing drink warmer, a fully automated mind-reading mixologist and a shot-pouring conveyor belt built entirely from Legos.
"You have liquor, fire and robots," said Johannes Grenzfurthner, Roboexotica organizer and member of art collective monochrom in Austria. "How could we go wrong?"
The annual gathering of booze-pouring robots is usually held in Vienna, Austria. To celebrate its approaching 10-year anniversary, organizers threw a San Francisco satellite event.
Though the U.S. event was slightly smaller than its Viennese counterpart, the barbots landed with a booze-fueled bang.
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]