Museum TinguelyRosenau
A Theatre of Automatons in five acts, with robot puppets activated by scanning barcodes on playing cards.
You collect a playing card at the ticket office, take it to a former telephone booth and scan the barcode printed on it. A robot puppet comes to life and sings and dances, moving to a routine Nicolas Darrot programmed himself and left partly to chance.
The booth is Basel's smallest exhibition space, and Darrot fills it in five acts, with a new figure and an opening night for each. Nanashi-Chan, Bone Machine and Shaman came first, Le petit clown arrived on 5 November, and Yuki Otoko opens on 7 January 2027 with a lecture-performance in French. Darrot worked in film special effects after art school, and the soundtracks are his own, recorded, or made with musicians. Swiss phone booths used to take a Taxcard; this one takes a playing card and answers with a song.
It's one booth, so fold it into a visit to the Tinguely collection. Activating the figures is included in the CHF 18 admission (CHF 12 for students), and Thursdays run until 9pm.
The barcoded playing cards
Each custom-designed card carries a barcode: scan it and one of Darrot's figures starts singing, dancing and moving by its own fuzzy logic.
The old telephone booth
Look for the museum's former telephone booth, now Basel's smallest exhibition space and the whole stage for this Theatre of Automatons.
Δική σας εικόνα; Ζητήστε μας να τη διορθώσουμε ή να την αφαιρέσουμε.