Crafton Student Artists Show Off their ‘Robotic’ Side
Publish Date: June 22, 2021
Organizers of a campus-wide Robotics and Robotic Art Competition have announced its winners: Midori Schardein, Marlena Camarena, and Eve Riggs.
The three Roadrunners will each take home a cash prize – including a top prize of $500 – and bragging rights.
Each participating student brought their own interpretation to the competition’s overall theme, which asked artists to expand their creative side by melding together robotics and art.
The competition – which began in early March – was planned as part of a campus- wide spring semester focus on the book Spare Parts, by Joshua Davis. Based on a true underdog story, the book follows four undocumented Latino teenagers from Arizona and their participation in the 2004 Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Events highlighting the book were launched earlier this year and included chapter discussions, an essay competition, and even an afternoon with OscarVasquez,one of the teens in the book. The Robotics and Robotic Art Competition carried over the theme of robotics. Camarena’s piece titled, “Robots Become
Human,” placed first the event’s Art Category. It explores the idea of robotics’ advancement in the medical field,particularly how “advanced bionics and biotechnology will change the world as we know it,” she explained.
“I’ve always been fascinated with robots,” she said. “Seeing robotics in science fiction films and seeing how they can help in the medicalfieldiswhatinspiredmetobecome a biomedical engineer. I truly believe that bionics is the future of the medical industry.”
Riggs – who placed in second in the same category – went a different route by paying homage to one of science fiction’s most beloved “Star Wars” characters, C-3PO.
“This robot is fluent in more than seven million forms of communication,” she said. “This is a robot that many children have watched growing up and inspires many young engineers. I hope to walk the earth with a robot like C-3PO one day.”
Schardein took an entirely different approach for her untitled piece by using visions of nature during the COVID-19 pandemic as inspiration. She explained that it was while being able to “break free from the confines” of her home that she was able to connect differently to the beauty around her.
“While I normally work in the digital and 2D atmosphere, I wanted to challenge myself with creating an object that represented the space where technology and nature intersect,” she said. “My piece is a step towards recreating [in a robot] the movement seen in a hummingbird pollinatingflowers,muchliketheonesIsee in my backyard daily.
“Even though robots are still commonly viewed as futuristic technology, I think we are constantly trying to recreate the things we know in the world around us,” she continued.“We keep coming up with ways to make more ‘natural’ and ‘human-like’ figures to better understand the unknown.”
Camarena and Riggs received $300 and $200 for their Robotics Art, respectively, while Schardein’s first place win in the Robot/Mechanized Art Category scored her a $500 prize.
To learn more about the event and its requirements, visit www.craftonhills.edu/features/one-book-one-college/robotics-competition.php
