Robot­ic chair

The Robot­ic Chair may look like a gener­ic wood­en chair. Unlike most chairs, how­ev­er, this one falls apart and puts itself back together.

The Robot­ic Chair is guid­ed by an over­head vision sys­tem and con­trolled over a wire­less net­work by an exter­nal com­put­er. Var­i­ous algo­rithms gov­ern the chair’s behav­ior, while the soft­ware is struc­tured in such a way that the sys­tem can learn from its environment.

The Robot­ic Chair keeps its con­trols and tech­nol­o­gy hid­den under a sim­ple wood­en veneer, mak­ing it high-tech in the most unas­sum­ing way. As the chair falls apart, gath­ers itself togeth­er and picks itself back up again and again, it reminds us not only of our fal­li­bil­i­ty, but also of our innate capac­i­ty for re-cre­at­ing ourselves.

Since its com­ple­tion in 2006, the Robot­ic Chair has fas­ci­nat­ed young and old alike. It has been exhib­it­ed at IdeaC­i­ty in Cana­da, ARS Elec­tron­i­ca in Aus­tria, ARCO in Spain and the Lon­don Art fair, along with many oth­er inter­na­tion­al venues. It is now a part of the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion at the Nation­al Gallery of Canada.