Ensemble

As well as imposing craft, as from the end of the 1990s Panamarenko also built small but intelligent birds and walking robots. The intelligence of the mechanics – with relays, servos and microchips – is directly in proportion to the refinement of their execution. In 2004 Panamarenko built Vogelmarkt (Bird Market), a poetic installation of three tables with an sun-awning as the setting for a demonstration of three walking chickens. The three birds in vivid colours are equipped with a small electric motor powered by a battery. The birds’ stepping mechanism refers back to the 1994 work Knikkebeen, an insect-like device on long aluminium legs that enable it to walk around more easily in the Swiss mountains. Panamarenko’s first fully-developed project for a robot was shown in an early drawing from 1970. It was only in 2004 that he decided to carry out the design as a working robot. In the summer of that year he took the device, called Arlikoop, with him to the North Pole, where he shot a series of films of it with the vast fields of snow and ice as a backdrop.

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