By SALEEN MARTIN, The Virginian-Pilot
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — There’s something eerie at the Barry Art Museum.
Tucked away on the second floor are machines that, when wound up, come to life. These automatons are designed to follow specific instructions; as spectators walk through, eyes follow their every move, including those of a jockey smoking a pipe, a banjo player and a child.
Chilling music plays from a 19th-century jewelry box, and one automaton carries flowers, coaxing passersby to purchase a few.
The pieces are part of “Motion/Emotion: Exploring Affect from Automata to Robots,” an exhibition that focuses on the emotional qualities of those machines and how they evoke emotion in people. Automatons and robots differ in that robots can perform multiple tasks, while automatons are designed to perform just one.
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Other parts of the exhibition include an educational area for children, as well as scenes looped on display from robot films, including the 2004 movie “I, Robot,” starring Will Smith.
Also included are robots used in military training and a robotic prototype that is intended to help children confined to hospital rooms. The machines could allow children to visit friends in other rooms, using cameras, and potentially other parts of the hospital to pick out lunch, or toys from the playroom.
The show will run until December and will include a lecture series on the first Thursday of each month, including a virtual one on April 7 featuring artist Elizabeth King with Jeremie Ryder, Guinness Collection conservator at New Jersey’s Morris Museum.
The show includes pieces dating to the 1800s as well as present-day machines.
Sara Woodbury, a doctoral candidate in American studies at William & Mary, curated the show. She was invited because she’d worked on a collection featuring historical automatons at Vermont’s Shelburne Museum.
“I think this smoking jockey guy is terrifying,” she said. The Jockey Smoker, made in 1880 by French mechanical toymaker Jean Roullet, gives her the creeps because he has no music box.
When he is wound up using a crank on his side, his left arm moves up and down, bringing the pipe to his mouth. His jaw opens and closes, as do his eyes. Real tobacco can be inserted into the piece and a bellows in his arm pumps air to his mouth, making it appear as if he’s inhaling and exhaling smoke. He also opens and closes his eyes, turns his head from side to side, and taps a riding crop against his leg, Woodbury said.
Automatons normally have music boxes, but not the jockey and others that emit smoke. There isn’t enough space for a music box when they are constructed this way, Woodbury said.
The show was put together using some pieces from the museum’s collection. The museum has pieces that span multiple genres, such as the automatons, which are related to dolls. The exhibition examines them as historical objects and products of their time — many were made in 19th-century Paris. As a result, some contain problematic or inaccurate representations of foreign cultures, said Charlotte Potter Kasic, executive director of the Barry Art Museum, which is housed at Old Dominion University.
One piece, Chinese Tea Server, incorporates three cultures. The automaton pours tea using a European tea service, while her hair is styled like that of a traditional Japanese hostess and her costume is Chinese, Kasic said.
Woodbury said the show has given them the chance to look at the pieces as complex, aesthetically interesting objects, but also to recognize that they are colonial pieces.
“They need to be understood as products of their climate and the museum itself doesn’t condone those beliefs,” Woodbury said.
The pieces don’t move during the show, but a video montage is looped in the exhibition so visitors can watch them move. On Tuesdays, people can stop by and watch as staff put them in motion. One automaton scurries across the floor.
“They’re really weird and wonderful,” Kasic said.
Also included are works from contemporary artists, including King and Joseph Morris. His pieces are made of plastic, steel and other materials; the pieces expand and collapse, mimicking lungs.
Morris uses everyday objects from hardware stores such as Home Depot. Even the concept of time plays a role in his work: The pieces will eventually disintegrate.
“They will go until they can no longer, just like our own bodies,” Kasic said.
King is based in Richmond. In 1991, she made a wooden jointed sculpture. She worked with director Richard Kizu-Blair, photographing the piece in different positions and merging the images into a stop-motion film. Viewers will see the specimen peer at its own hands in “self-discovery.”
King is the daughter of a physician and taught at Virginia Commonwealth University for about 20 years. Her pieces are laced with a “deep consciousness,” allowing spectators to see inanimate objects “coming to life, exploring,” Kasic said.
Woodbury likes the show’s variety.
“Over the course of this show, I’ve read about robotic artworks, robots making art, artists collaborating with robots to make art, artists becoming cyborgs to further their artistic practice and more,” she said. “The hardest part about this exhibition was figuring out how to narrow it down to something we could coherently discuss within a single gallery. There is so much interesting, exciting and important work happening out there. It was hard because any single one of these topics would have made for a great show.”
When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Through Dec. 31.
Where: Barry Art Museum, 1075 W. 43rd St., Norfolk
Tickets and parking: Free; parking available in the Constant Center Garage on West 43rd Street; follow signs for Barry Art Museum parking.
Details: tinyurl.com/ODURobots, barryartmuseum@odu.edu or 757-683-6200
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