Robot Light Motif, commissioned by the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco, augments MCD’s community education and access programming. In dialogue with an exhibition of robot light drawings, Robot Light Motif invites visitors to feel and imagine their own versions of what a robot made. It improvises on the artistic lines of a robot’s work via distinct layers of material, texture, sound, light, and space. Three panels made with diverse materials and textures can be stacked, rotated, separated, and rearranged for a tactile and audible experience. Visitors may listen to and recorded participatory audio descriptions on each of the panels. I designed Robot Light Motif to be changed by human touch and expanded by human interpretation. Visitors directly experience the feeling of becoming the “artist’s hand”— that is, our own senses engaging with and, to some extent altering, a design motif originally made by a robotic arm and then reinterpreted by us.

Robot Light Motif. R Lanzerotti, 2024.

Commissioned for community access and education programming with the Museum of Craft and Design exhibition Mr. Roboto, February 24 - June 30, 2024.