CHIC CITYRATS

The Meet the Made exhibition puts a large part of Pittsburgh's former mattress factory at the disposal of 17 artists, the creators of a dozen works that explore the relationship between contemporary culture and robotics.

Equipped with night-vision goggles, one discovers Space Invaders (Rat King) (2008), inspired to Lauren Frances Adams and Jake Peterson by the cryptozoological myth of the rat kings, creatures supposedly formed when several rats become inextricably entangled by their tails. The installation confronts the exploitation of the natural world with "technology gone awry". The elements forming the system all pull in opposite directions, as would the autonomous rats in a rat king, although they all derive power from the same source.

Betsy James diSalvo's Cupcake Robot (2008) claims it can produce personalized cakes for every visitor, based on a personality quizz. However, as with many machines supposed to improve housewives' lives, it's incapable of fulfilling its professed function, and Betsy herself, an emblem of the frustrated housekeeper, has to make up for it failings.

Anderson and Slifer's Enoch Hammer (2008) refers to the violent Luddite riots that broke in Great-Britain in 1811-12. The hammer, a symbol of this first workers' protest against the mechanization of industry, is deprived of all power and relevance by this reliquary-like installation, watched over by two security cameras.

As to Adam Shreckhise's Empathy Implant (2008), it's difficult to determine whether it's used to endow the robot it equips with empathy, or the humans around it.

For the bold, it's possible to get hypnotized by a professional and join the ranks of the Human to Robot Army imagined by John Peña, Jon Rubin and Brett Yasko. In response to a definite word, and for a brief interval of time, the volunteers will start behaving like robots. Post-cyberpunk...

Meet the Made

July 11 through August 31, 08

Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh

Current exhibitions' page on www.mattress.org

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