NESL (short film)

TGIF! And I don’t forget the futuristic short! This week I’m sharing a more experimental one. NESL is a short film that arises from a speculative design research project of several years on Phenomenal Machines developed by Nicole Koltick, futurist and Director of the Design Futures Lab at Drexel University. This short movie was the winner of the ROS Film Festival in the Real Robots category.

What would happen if an automaton had a hobby? Or if it was dedicated exclusively to beautiful or poetic tasks? After asking these philosophical questions, Koltick decided to place the automatons, developed as part of his research project Phenomenal Machines, in a “synthetic ecology” where they could affect and be affected. “Robots are real and many of their actions are real. However, robots as actors are difficult,” jokes Koltick.
Both they and the landscape have been manufactured with techniques such as 3D printing, they have a basic vision thanks to a small camera (they recognize colors but not shapes), and they are programmed to “imitate biological processes and shapes”.

Super interesting approach and execution, without any dialogue. Pure futuristic poetry!

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