BigBots: Osman Khan
Mower
Anyone in the city or suburbs who has a big lawn knows the tedium of mowing it weekly. Wouldn’t it be nice if you were allowed to have livestock in the yard to keep the grass under control? Well, yes and no — there’s always the dung to deal with. Visiting Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Art, Osman Khan, may have an answer to that dilemma with his Mower, a robotic sheep that will be on the lawn of Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens from July 11–28. Khan’s Mower is one of the BigBots created for Robot 250. He said he created it, “with reference to Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and allusions to green / sustainable practices of using sheep to maintain lawns in, for example, city parks in Curtiba, Brazil.” “The project will be to place a robotic sheep on a lawn… that will autonomously roam the lawn, trimming it as it goes. The mouth of the sheep will contain a grass-mowing device, and the head of the sheep will be outfitted with navigational and obstacle avoidance sensors. As well, the sheep will have quadrupedal walking mechanics,” Khan said.
Osman Khan
Osman Khan is an artist interested in using technology to construct artifacts and experiences for social criticism and aesthetic expression. His work explores certain themes to see how technology fabricates as well as subverts our understanding of identity, communication, and public space through participatory installations and site-specific interventions.
Osman Khan received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University in New York, USA in 1995. He served as Creative Director for Elliance, a Web development company, until 2002. He completed his MFA at UCLA's Department of Design | Media Arts in 2004. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon.
His work has been shown at Shanghai Biennale, China; ZeroOne Festival, San Jose, USA; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan; L.A. Louver, Los Angeles, USA; Witte de With, Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Ars Electronica Center, Linz, Austria; O.K Center for Contemporary Art, Linz, Austria; SIGGRAPH, San Diego, USA; Beyond Media Festival, Florence, Italy; Bank, Los Angeles, USA; telic, Los Angeles. Articles about his work have appeared in Artforum, Artweek, Art Review, I.D., LA Times and Artnet.
Location: Phipps Conservatory
Helpful Hints: This BigBot is located on the lawn in front of the conservatory.