Louis-Philippe Demers / THE BLIND ROBOT

The robot is a fascinating piece of technology, and the idea for it is very simple, in fact. Two robotic arms simulate how a blind person would see or scan a person’s face, by gently touching the face with it’s mechanical fingertips. If you are the person being touched, you can watch yourself in a mirror, and it’s a strange feeling you get while being scaned. There’s certainly an element of surprise about how gently the robot does his routine, although at the point when it stops at shoulder-height before moving on to your face, flashes of Sci-Fi-movies come into one’s mind and you start asking yourself wheter this machine is in fact strong enough to hurt you. The whole experience is amazing and creates a completely different perspective on robots. “It is a psychological experiment” tells Louis-Philippe Demers, the artist behind The Blind Robot, “just by the fact that I state that this is a blind robot, you will accept that this machine can touch you in very intimate places. If there would be a robot and I wouldn’t say anything or tell you that this device is here to measure your heart-rate by touching you, you would have a very different reaction.”