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essay: the use of robotics in the entertainment industry

6-24-'^o1: 12:02am

ah, the miracles of modern science. no longer do cars and other bothersome things need to be painstakingly put together on a human assembly line [ nope...only tennis shoes and that's just child labour, anyway ]...and we have the advancement in robotics to thank for that. every day, things are becoming more and more like the jetsons...robots are progressing at an alarming rate and soon will be booting people out of their jobs. we have already seen the results of this phenomenon in the last presidential campaign.

the topic i'm here to discuss, however, is the use of robotics in the entertainment industry. no longer is it just a casio keyboard and a drum box...oh no. advancements in technology are streching far beyond getting a certian sound in music or a more realiztic look in animation. the entertainment busisness is actually the number one test subjects of many beta versions artificial intelligence. surprised? you shouldn't be. i mean...how else would they get angelina jolie to look that much like lara croft?

that's right: she's a robot.

the main example i'd like to cite, however, is the group *nsync. i've puzzled over people accusations that "all they do is sing and dance, that's so lame, they don't even play their own instruments". have you ever tried to sing and dance at the same time? can you stay in tune? now, try doing that for two hours straight. possible?

i think not.

how, then, do these five boys manage to put on such a show? i'll tell you how: they're robots. specially engineered to provide the world with their thrusty dance movement and sweet ear-candy harmonies. if you have monitored the group through their progression to ultra-stardom, you will notice that the road hasn't been without bumps: as with any new technology, newer and better advancements have come along and old models have had to be adjusted. they are, however, nearing perfection with this new dirty-pop machine. the popoddesy tour shows that it isn't just assembly lines anymore; these robots can not only put on a show, but can appear extremely human and lifelike.

what better example is there other than justin timberlake? his body at 14 years old is enough to make a 20 year old woman feel very dirty indeed. the female recreational and orgasmic [ FRO ] model robot has been designed to be a model of visual and aural perfection. in order to keep with human nature, they gave him the archetype of a male personality; a love for sports, a tendency to strike up jealousy in males and thus seem like an asshole. his debut came on project MMC, lovingly called "the mickey mouse club" by the media. he was built, for lack of a better way to put it, to be a sex machine.

charting eldest member chris kirkpatrick's progress, it is obvious that scientists have had trouble deciding on his outward appearence...but they have done a fantastic job of fine-tuning his personality. chris, who is a funny/unpredictable [ FU ] model robot, has gotten the label of "crazy" one in the group through careful tweaking of his circuts to ensure that he always has the most perfect, witty, and unbelievable thing to say. it is unnatural that any one person could be so funny all the time and make it look so natural. good thing this technology isn't avalible to the public...it could be a very dangerous thing and could end up destroying the world in a battle of wits.

perhaps one of the most amazing examples of movement in this new field of robotics is jc chasez. the passionate music type of the group, the synthesized and pperfected area zonality model [ SPAZ ] robot has been a constant project. first tested with several other models on project MMC, the SPAZ model was meant to be an ultra-flexible, high energy robot. he was also equipped with the latest, most secret advanced super-synthesizer, which is constantly being adjusted to provide the most perfect vocal sound. when project MMC, the SPAZ model was then chosen to undergo further testing in *nsync to judge the effects of his movement programming on the sex drives of teenage girls. the study is yielding too much information to process. his felxibility, however, only baffled me until i realized that he, too, was a robot.

"but...but..." you may say, "how on earth could joey fatone possibly be a robot?" true, he may seem like a less perfected model...but that's just it. he is the ultimate in aritificial intelligence: the regular-guy-on-the-street type model. the "personable, human, approachable type" [ PHAT ] model robot, while it has super-human dancing and singing skills, was not equipped with the perfection of some of the other models. this is to restore some believability to the group...his down-to-earth ladies-man personality could be any one of your friends or neighbors. it could be argued, in fact, that because of this joey is the most perfected of them all.

originally, it was the plan of the scientific team to provide a control in the group, as was done through the many non-robotic members of project MMC. this control turned out to be a show-choir boy from missisippi, lance bass. while the other members of the group all had connections through the labs where they were manufactured, lance was hand-picked to join the group and provide a human rule by which they could measure the robots' performance. this, however, turned out to be somewhat of a mistake: scientist's attempts to make lance fit in with the four robots ended up backfiring through several poorly-articulated hairstyles and a tendency to over-pluck his eyebrows. still, his voice and southern charm became a fixture in the group that would have been immediately noticed if they had been taken away. the solution? it fell into their hands as lance, being human, became ill and collapsed during a show. during his hospital stay, scientists performed one of the most daring experiments yet: the conversion of lance bass into a cyborg. this would allow for more ease in movement AND appearence, they figured...and judging by his recent ability to handle dance-bot wade j robson's choreography and his recent establishment as a sex symbol in pop culture, the experiment has been a success. lance bass is living proof that robots and humans can co-exist peacefully, and also that mississippi isn't completely useless.

luckily, the *nsync project has been one of the few successful of it's kind. previous attempts, such as project NKOTB in the early nineties, only served as an example of what NOT to do. other current projects, such as project backstreet, may not have the same rate of success but are important to developments of the dirty pop machine. they act as a springboard for the ideas that eventually reach perfection in project *nsync. let's hope, however, that the whole long-hair thing misses the boat.

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