Name: TVO Arts - Max Dean, Raffaello D'Andrea, Matt Donovan, The Robotic Chair
Description: Decades in the making, The Robotic Chair is a touching artwork about resilience — and a project which also took incredible resilience, collaboration and some playfulness to create.

Learn how to decode Canadian art | TVO Arts

Sometimes, when you learn the story behind the art, you can appreciate it even more. Shall we try another? 


Falling is everywhere … We fall in love, we fall into depression, we fall asleep. And then there's this whole aspect of once we've fallen, putting ourselves back together.

What do you think about art that uses technology?


What were the artists trying to express? 


Decades in the making, The Robotic Chair is a touching artwork about resilience — and a project which also took incredible resilience, collaboration and some playfulness to create.

TVO Arts - Max Dean, Raffaello D'Andrea, Matt Donovan, The Robotic Chair

Narrator (00:02):
Art shows us that the impossible can become possible. Sometimes it just takes a little perseverance. This is "The Robotic Chair". It was created by Max Dean, Raffaello D'Andrea and Matt Donovan built between 1984 and 2006. That's more than 20 years in the making. There are actually several chairs in existence, and they've delighted viewers all over the world. Although it may look like the most ordinary chair, it teaches us a deeply human lesson about falling and getting back up.
Nikola (00:44):
I saw a chair break down, smash and start to rise a little bit and reassemble itself, reorganizing its pieces.
Claudia (00:57):
Standing back up is the first thing that came to mind as I was trying to understand all these pieces that were deconstructing and then putting themselves back together.
Narrator (01:08):
It looks like a generic wooden chair, the kind you'd find in a classroom or a waiting room. But without notice, the seat collapses to the floor with a thunderous crash throwing its pieces across the platform. Then slowly, almost magically, "The Robotic Chair" puts itself back together from collapse to complete reassembly. The performance takes between five and 15 minutes.
(01:32):
"The Robotic Chair" is an example of kinetic sculpture from the Greek word kinesis for movement. Kinetic sculpture is a three dimensional artwork in which motion plays an important part in the sculpture's design. Kinetic sculpture might move naturally, such as this wind powered artwork, or with help from a person or a machine like "The Robotic Chair" Many examples of kinetic art draw comparisons between mechanical actions and the human body. Despite all the gears and circuitry, we can see something about ourselves reflected in them.
Claudia (02:05):
You immediately establish a connection because it's something that is not supposed to do what it's doing, and it's something you've probably never seen before.
Nikola (02:15):
After it had fallen apart and the seat seemed to rise up a little bit, almost like it was surveying itself, that's when the chair seemed alive.
Narrator (02:27):
"The Robotic Chair" is a collaboration between three very different artists. Max Dean was born in 1949. As a child, he immigrated from England to Canada with his family settling in Vancouver.
Max Dean (Artist) (02:39):
I wanted to be an artist when I was a kid, when I was a teen, but I never thought that I could be an artist, right? Because I thought I needed to know how to draw and paint, and it was only when I got to university that I realized or was told that visual arts was about the history of ideas, and I thought, oh, I can use ideas.
Narrator (02:59):
Today. Dean is a celebrated artist with notable works in photography, performance, installation, and kinetic art. Since childhood, he has experienced seizures. So risk collapse and re composure are themes he regularly explores through his art.
Max Dean (Artist) (03:17):
Much of my art has been about taking control. When are we or when do we lose control of our body, and how do we maintain that? So a chair that falls apart unannounced anyone is just like me having a seizure.
Narrator (03:31):
In fact, it's been suggested that "The Robotic Chair" can be understood as a portrait of the artist.
(03:38):
Raffaello D'Andrea is another one of the brains behind the chair. Born in 1967, D'Andrea is an inventor, engineer, entrepreneur, and new media artist. He has been called a pioneer in the field of robotics, co-founding the company that invented Amazon's famous mobile warehouse robots and leading the Cornell Robot soccer team to four World Championships.
(04:03):
Completing the chair's creative trio is Matt Donovan, born in 1974. Donovan is a Toronto-based artist and industrial designer. He's best known for conceptual works, as well as these intricate 2D and 3D mosaics made out of Lego.
(04:18):
Together, the three would fulfill an idea that for decades seemed impossible. Dean had been thinking about a teacher's chair as an artistic subject since the early 1970s. I
Max Dean (Artist) (04:29):
Like to use objects that people know, so there's not this kind of need to introduce them to something new. We already have some experience or a considerable amount of experience with the chair.
Narrator (04:39):
It was in 1984 that he got the idea for a chair that could fall apart and put itself back together, and he began its development the following year as an artist in residence at the National Museum of Science and Technology. In this earliest build, a robotic arm housed in the seat of the chair, was designed to collect the scattered components and slot them back into place. But with a number of technical challenges unresolved, the piece wasn't yet functional.
(05:06):
Over the next 10 years or so, Dean tinkered with the concept off and on, but a working model evaded him. It wasn't until Dean began to collaborate with D'Andrea on another project, and Donovan joined the studio that his tough to crack idea finally came to life.
Matt Donovan (Artist) (05:22):
My first reaction to "The Robotic Chair" was sort of like, this is impossible. There's no way we're going to do this.
Raffaello D'Andrea (Artist) (05:30):
I thought that it'd be quite striking to see something do that. Then the engineering perspective kicked in, and I realized that it would be extremely difficult to make something like that for various reasons.
Narrator (05:42):
D'Andrea suggested abandoning the robotic arm in favor of a mobile robot hidden in the seat that could dock with the other components. The idea was similar to the kind of technology he was using in his warehouse robots.
Raffaello D'Andrea (Artist) (05:55):
Whenever something required intelligence, I always thought about can it be even more intelligent if it moved? So trying to pose the problem of making a self assembling chair as a problem of creating a mobile robot that did it was kind of natural given what I had been working on after that time.
Matt Donovan (Artist) (06:16):
It was the moment that Raf mentioned that idea that I was like, that was the Eureka moment.
(06:22):
D'Andrea wrote the algorithms that would allow the chair to fall apart, find its pieces, and then move them back into place. Donovan crafted its mechanical design and handled its fabrication, making sure it was tough enough to collapse thousands of times over, yet still look like an ordinary chair. The bulk of the machinery would be hidden away inside its seat, including 14 motors, mechanical joints, a wireless radio wheels, a battery pack, and various electronic components.
(06:52):
Prototyping began in 2003 and was completed in 2006. "The Robotic Chair" premiered in Toronto that summer, and later that year, the artwork received an honorary mention at Prix Ars Electronica in Austria, where the award presenter said, the chair makes us believe again in the power of magic.
Raffaello D'Andrea (Artist) (07:11):
For me, "The Robotic Chair" really is an attempt, and it's an illusion to make time flow backwards to make the laws of physics go in a direction that they're not supposed to go.
Max Dean (Artist) (07:24):
When the chair stood for the first time like that, it was like we were blown away, and you just sit there in awe and you go like, wow, we did it
Phyllis (07:32):
On the outside. It sounds really simple, but to learn about the struggle and all the collaboration and the hard work that goes into programming something like this, that's almost a feat in itself.
Narrator (07:44):
Of course, art and technology have always been intertwined. Artists invent technologies and discover new applications. It's been said that artists humanize technology by engaging with it from a human perspective, although it's sometimes divorced from the worlds of science, technology, engineering, and math art emphasizes the importance of play and creativity in problem solving and decision making.
Raffaello D'Andrea (Artist) (08:08):
There's a famous quote saying, science is about discovering the world that is, and engineering is creating the world that never was. Art is like that too. Art and engineering share a lot of that act of creation
Narrator (08:21):
In "The Robotic Chair" art and technology meet as the means to realize an idea. How else could the creators make this inanimate object seem to have a life of its own?
Max Dean (Artist) (08:32):
A performance of "The Robotic Chair" starts with the chair standing on this platform. At some moment, it falls apart. So what really happens is within the chair, there's a number of joints. The joints are released and the chair falls randomly onto the floor. There's a video camera above the chair at this moment like that, that's reading where all of the parts are. The camera is sending that information to a laptop, and it is then taking that information and figuring out what and how to put itself back together, and there's a sort of prescribed script about how it's going to do it. And then voila, you have the chair again
Narrator (09:10):
Watching this object repair itself and try to become whole again over and over. It's impossible not to see a very human tail. "The Robotic Chair" tells a story of failure and recovery, but what makes this chair so special is that it never stops putting itself back together.
Kyana (09:27):
You never are a static person through your entire life. You're always, you'll fall apart. You build yourself into somebody new.
Phyllis (09:33):
So it's kind of, to me, it portrays that the journey towards building something back up is not linear. It's not stepwise. It's kind of messy. It's kind of all over the place.
Narrator (09:45):
Transcending languages and cultures. The sculpture offers us a rather poetic representation of resilience. Like the chair, there will be moments when we fall down, but we have the power to pick ourselves up and begin anew. Its message is both universal — and timeless.
(10:07):
Join us as we decode Canadian art and understand why looking at art matters.

The Robotic Chair

This is The Robotic Chair by Max Dean, Raffaello D’Andrea and Matt Donovan. Although it looks like any ordinary seat — the kind you’d find in a classroom or a doctor’s office — this particular chair can do the most extraordinary thing.With a thunderous crash, The Robotic Chair falls to pieces. Then, slowly, almost magically, the artwork puts itself back together and stands up — a complete chair once more.

The Robotic Chair

Max Dean, Raffaello D’Andrea, Matt Donovan

What’s your first reaction?

The Robotic ChairThe Robotic Chair

Max Dean, Raffaello D’Andrea, Matt Donovan

What’s your first reaction?

The Robotic Chair