/ News
Robot & Frank’s Vaguely Creepy Ads Want to Sell You an Android
Indie sci-fi movie Robot & Frank is built around a somewhat messed-up premise: Buying a robotcompanion to take care of your aging father when you’re not around. Even though such care-bots aren’t available (yet), director Jake Schreier created a vaguely creepy faux ad campaign to market the mythical machines.
“Part of the thing that triggered it is that people came out of the movie like, ‘I want one!’” Schreier said in an interview with Wired about the robot adverts, which went online Wednesday and can be previewed in the gallery above. “If people are feeling it that strongly, then an ad campaign to basically sell just that one idea to them might be a good thing to tap into. And for anyone who thinks that’s creepy, then that’s also good, because that’s also something that catches you about the campaign and that’s something that the movie deals with.”
Robot & Frank, which hits theaters later this month, is a study in how much we can or should rely on mechanical helpers. Schreier’s debut film stars Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon) as Frank, an aging one-time cat-burglar whose adult children (played by Liv Tyler and James Marsden) give him a VGC-60L robot that ends up helping Frank with more than just an enema.
But the VGC-60L’s special abilities are not the kind of thing that would be featured in a standard marketing brochure, so Schreier crafted the fake ads showing the robot performing tasks that ostensibly would be helpful — like getting groceries and dancing with grandma. (It’s exactly the kind of advertising that would’ve led a crotchety old man’s kids to leave him in the care of artificial intelligence.)
Then Schreier asked his friend Justin Ouellette, who created the futuristic user interfaces seen in the film and now works for Tumblr, to post them on a flashy page built around Ouellette’s popular Tumblr theme.
Schreier, who previously directed commercials, also got some tough-love creative input from Ouellette.
“He grossly objected to my graphic design of the titles and everything,” Schreier said, as Ouellette was working on the final designs. “The taglines are going to be the same but he’s going to redo the design of the images and I think he’s tweaking his Tumblr theme to help put it out there, which is great.”
A couple dozen ads have been made for the Robot & Frank Tumblr — see the first four in the gallery above — and new images will roll out up until the film’s release.
Schreier said he hopes the faux ads will make the idea of robot helpers accessible to potential moviegoers, but also cause people to question just how comfortable they would be around such machines — much the same way as the fake “Happy Birthday David” commercial for Prometheus got people thinking.
“If anything, the [Robot & Frank] ad campaign is the rosier side,” Schreier said. “But there is kind of a catch to it where you’re like, ‘Oh, it’s so cute when the robot’s dancing with the old woman!’ But also, ‘Is that alright?’ Hopefully it gets into a little bit of that questioning.”
Trailer: http://bcove.me/5y8xrig2
Source: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/08/robot-and-frank-robot-ads/
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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