Audience - rAndom International from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.

I love installation art and I am always looking for new pieces from different artists especially when they have incorporated something new or unusual into the piece. This is an intriguing little installment by rAndom International with Chris O'Shea for the Wayne McGregor's Deloitte Ignite Festival at the Royal Opera House.
The installation is made of 64 robotic mirrors that move and behave similar to humans. When visitors/viewers stand in front of the robotic mirrors, they watch them and follow their every move. When no one is around, the robotic mirrors "talk" amongst themselves and mind their own business until the next human comes along. Check out Chris O'Shea's site for more technical info on how it works exactly, it's pretty amazing.
They're kind of cute in a "Wall-E" type of way, though when you look at them the only thing staring back is you. You might think that this sort of thing is creepy, but I thought that it was a great example of an evolutionist piece of art. Fifty years ago and no one would have ever expected anything like this to have been thought of and/or actually see it come to life (literally), let alone considered it a piece of art. Though it may seem pretty outlandish to perceive this piece as "true" art, think about the individual components; the creativity and engineering of the project are genius. The hardware, software, concept and design all began in someone's head and the effort to produce this was probably colossal and tiring. rAndom international writes this about the concept of the project:

"The intention was to start taking interaction with an installation further away from the screen or media wall and introduce it into a more physical, three-dimensional space, and to begin to investigate if machines can evoke diverse emotional reactions with the simplest of means... The collective behaviour of the objects is beyond the control of the viewer, as it is left entirely to their discretion to let go of their subject, with the installation aiming to reverse the roles of the viewer and the viewed during this in-voluntary interaction."

Machines do invoke emotional reactions... I tend to have massive anxiety attacks when my desktop PC doesn't behave the way I would like.