INSTALLATION BY WOODY VASULKA www.vasulka.org Kinetic Media Machine Media (PDF)

With the media opera R.U.R., we want to appreciate the Czech author Karel Čapek (Czechia's Goethe) and his importance for the European cultural expression. It is he who in R.U.R. used for the first time the expression robot, invented by his brother - famous painter and writer - Josef Čapek. R.U.R. is a classic of science-fiction literature and has nothing lost of its formative influence. One out of many examples are movies such as "A.I." (Artificial Intelligence) and "I Robot", both of which have obviously taken scenes from Čapek's play.

Furthermore, the revertive reflection on a piece of the 20's evokes the memory of a period of European history which was marked by a creative and interactive influence among the artists (1920's and 1930's). Music as the universal language and location of art is once again the intermediary without whom the world wide circulation of e.g. the pop culture would not have been possible.

The most successful delegates of the Czech Republic are not only athletes and their athletic achievements, but also new thoughts, among which an artificial creature exceeds. Its creators, the Čapek brothers, named it ROBOT. In the twenties of the past century the ROBOTS appeared for the first time in Čapek`s theatre play R.U.R. (Rossum`s Universal Robots) and piqued the public interest on every outstanding global scene. The world suddenly adopted this new Czech word. In actual times ROBOTS and artificial intelligence are a phenomenon of industry, economy and art.
MEDIA ARCHIV returns the ROBOT on the scene in the form of a multimedia audio performance, staged on an artificial island, for Karel Čapek has already situated the plot of R.U.R. on an oceanic island.

In the farther presented information you can find the project of an artificial und extremely artistic island, which uses state-of-the-art echnology to involve the audience into the intellectual heritage of the Čapek brothers in every European city connected to the dense system of waterways. The commencement of the several years enduring tour with a two day program (the first day for the audience interested in opera, the second day includes the short festival "Night of Robots" for a wide spectrum of spectators), which shall reassume the success of the premiere in the National Theatre of Brno, which was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the program Culture 2000 EU.

The significant prelude of  farther presented ambitious project Floating Island, whose attempt it is to spread the Czech fine arts around the European waterways, is the already mentioned performance prepared to be ushered in Prague - A tribute to the Čapek brothers "Night of Robots".

Project is supported by the Czech Cultural Department and the Culture 2000 programme of the European Union.