Singing Benches and Trash Cans

Robotic benches and bins with Sirius Cybernetics Corporation GPP (Genuine People Personalities) straight out of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy have been created by Greyworld, a group of London artists.

Andrew Shoben of Greyworld describes the six solar-powered robotic bins and benches in the following way:

"At first glance it may look like nothing has changed at all but the bins and benches all have unique personalities.

"They are what's called "generative" so that over time they develop more and more personality.

"You'll find that one bench may be particularly attracted to a particular bin. They will chuckle and giggle sometimes or make rude noises."

The bins and benches can be found at the Piazza, the new public square for Cambridge at the center of the Cambridge Leisure development. The benches love to be sat on - it makes them so happy that they may take up new positions to make themselves more attractive. The bins roam the piazza, but are more solitary.

These robotic benches and bins are suspiciously like devices created by the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation in the Hitchhiker's Guide. The self-satisfied doors of Ford Prefect's space ship are typical; check out this quote from the brochure:

All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.

(Read more about the self-satisfied door)

See more ideas and inventions from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ; read more about the Greystone project at Singing benches set loose in the city. You might be interested in a related Science Fiction in the News story - Berlin Gets Talking Trash Cans.

(This Science Fiction in the News story used with permission from Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction.)