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Monday July 10, 2006
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 Thanks to editor, reviews, Lance Ulanoff for this story!
The second most frightening moment in the movie version of "The Wizard of Oz" (the scariest is the crystal-ball transformation of Aunt Em into the Wicked Witch) is the haunted forest scene, where the trees come to life and try to tear Dorothy limb from limb. I'm sure that is not what inspired the members of Robotany to build the world's first robot tree, also known as Breeze. This group of Swiss artists attempts to combine nature and robotics, and have succeeded in melding a live Japanese maple tree with actuator wires made of Flexinol (a shape-memory alloy): The trees branches can detect passersby and, according to the Robotanists, "visually sense and react." Breeze's reactions are the really creepy part. The tree twitches individual branches around the full circumference of its... er... body. Its parents call the movements subtle and artistic, but admit that it's also "surreal." I'm a bit weirded out. Toto would be terrified.
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July 10, 2006 5:46 PM
I desperately want one.
July 11, 2006 9:09 AM
This robot definitely wigs me out, not to mention thinking about an even creepier Oz movie called, "Return to Oz" which involves a chicken named Billina, a witch who keeps her different "heads" locked away in display cases, and Dorothy being treated by a doctor for Dislusional Depression and Acute Insomina. It gave me nightmares as a kid!!
July 11, 2006 2:08 PM
Forget the trees, just send me some flexinol - if the Army hasn't bought it all to play with at Abu Ghraib. Did US Postal have flexinol in the riders' shorts? The mind boggles!
July 11, 2006 2:41 PM
art starts out with a concept that can't otherwise be expressed. those conceopts become products, at aome point, if they have meaninhg for people's lives. there will be a problem that this tree can solve. between the problem and the solution, you need a bridge.
July 11, 2006 3:07 PM
I guess to some people there is no limit to what they should / should not do. The poor tree is experiencing Conditioning and has no way to react other than some kind of sporadic movement. It reminds me of the olden days when we used to touch the poles of a 9V battery to our tongue and laugh as it wiggled uncontrollably. Poor tree...
July 11, 2006 4:19 PM
I have to agree with Rick.This is tech gone too far.It is time to put some limits on all this technosadism!!
July 11, 2006 5:11 PM
A tree has no brain / soul / seat of consiousness, and therefore could care less whether some mad scientist has melded some wires into it. And I still put 9V batteries to my tongue. I love that stuff!
July 11, 2006 6:32 PM
Would like to see it twitch. How does it actually look when someone walks by?
July 11, 2006 7:13 PM
Dig the shit out of this...where and how much for it?
July 12, 2006 8:10 AM
The Robotany Web site has a demo of sorts; go to http://www.danielbauen.com/robotany/.
July 26, 2006 10:24 PM
see http://www.ife.ee.ethz.ch/~jill/robotany/ for a demo