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In 1992 The Robot Group staged Robofest 3, which provided a venue for the debut of several new group projects. One such work was the HELICOPTER BLIMP by David Santos and George Parks.
Members of Shrinking Robot Heads
Robofest 3 also featured a live musical performance by an unlikely pairing of organic and inorganic band members. The SHRINKING ROBOT HEADS BAND, managed by Craig and Charlene Sainsott, along with the Sainsotts and other carbon-based members of the Robot Group produced a new sound mix of industrial, metal, and alternative music. This mecha-organic ensemble had just a few weeks earlier broken ground at the X/XX Experimental Music Festival. Their performance at the festival was the first in Austin to use a virtual reality (VR) interface in a musical performance. While the session did not produce any record deals, the audience was thoroughly entertained and amazed. Many questions were answered after the show.
Glen Currie's DWEEBVISION, an inexpensive telepresence demonstrator also made its first appearance and was very popular with the children who followed it around all weekend long. DWEEBVISION was built with radio control parts and a Fisher Price Pixel 2000 camera. The camera is mounted on DWEEBVISION and sends it's video signal back to a remote monitor via a VCR Rabbit. Most of the kids may not have realized that they were playing with a telepresence toy, they just seemed to enjoy driving it around.
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