Max Dean is co-creator of The Robotic Chair, seen at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz in September, which explores the process of imbuing inanimate objects with humanity. The chair is designed to fall into pieces and laboriously reassemble itself in an act of methodical self-preservation. An earlier project, The Table, is able to sense and select a single person in a room with whom to attempt to strike up a relationship with attention-seeking wiggles and turns. There is a desire to understand who we are, and one way of doing this is to try to duplicate ourselves,’ says Dean.

Having completely missed it coming out, here’s some late notice that I wrote about robotic art for Design Week (9 November issue). By the way, I’m not sure how long that link will work as articles on the DW site are meant to be subscription-only.