"The Helpless Robot" is not an ordinary robot. Rather than making human lives easier as robots are supposed to do, this machine is a querulous and useless subject, one that obeys non of the dictates of the efficiency paradigm. The robot is interfering and arrogant, and before you know it you find yourself having to pander to the whims of this self-willed machine. In his fixed installation The Helpless Robot the Canadian artist Norman T. White has created a cybernetic sculpture which reacts on an individual basis to the attitude of its counterpart. Provided with an electronic voice that commands a repertoire of 512 sentences in French, English and Spanish, it invites the visitor to interact. While it starts off by asking quite politely if you can help it out by moving it into the correct position, as time goes on it becomes constantly more demanding. The more cooperative you prove to be, the more dictatorial the robot becomes. For White, the main focus of the work is on the possibility of simulation: “I do not mean to provide a commentary through this scenario on the tyranny of technology - it is rather a matter of a simple conceptual device that becomes an interactive artificial intelligence.” Agnes Etherington Art Centre Collection, Kingston Electrohype, Malmo