SAM was made for and shown at Jasia Reichardt’s Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London in 1968.
It consists of a fibre-glass sound reflector in the shape of a flower with four microphones mounted in a crossshape on its front, supported on an aluminium ‘spine’, with four connected vertebrae. Each vertebra contained small pistons with servo-valves that allowed the sculpture to move from side to side and back and forth.
The microphones on the sound reflector were mounted in pairs, one vertical and one horizontal, with each pair connected to an analogue circuit. The circuit measured the phase difference between the sound signals on the paired microphones, meaning the difference in the time a sound reached the microphone and thereby the direction of its source.
The output was then used to control the movement of the pistons, causing the whole assemblage to move and sway in response to sounds made by viewers. While SAM is no longer operational, the accompanying footage shows entranced children as the sculpture moves in response to shouting and singing.
Edward Ihnatowicz was a cybernetic sculptor active in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
His ground-breaking sculptures explore the interaction between his robotic works and the audience, and reached their height with The Senster, a large (4.5 metres long) hydraulic robot commissioned in 1970 by the electronics giant, Philips, for their permanent showplace, the Evoluon (Eindhoven). The sculpture used sound and movement sensors to react to the behaviour of the visitors. It was one of the first computer controlled interactive robotic works of art.
From 1939 to 1943, Inhatowitcz was a war refugee in Romania and Algiers. In 1943 he arrived in Britain and from 1945 to 1949 he attended the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford.
He created bespoke furniture and interior decoration, until in 1962 he left home to try to find his artistic roots and lived in an unconverted garage. He experimented with life sculpture and portraiture and sculpture made of scrap cars.
In 1968 he created SAM and from 1969 to 1971 he created The Senster. From 1971 to 1986 he worked as a Research Assistant in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University College, London. In 1973 he created The Bandit Oct. In 1988 he died of a myocardial infarction (heart attack). His wife Olga has allowed his work to live on. (Bio courtesy of Alex Zivanovic - www.senster.com)
