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Frank Garvey
Research Fellow, RI/Art

No longer a member of RI.

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MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1982)
Post-Graduate work in computer animation at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, University of Illinois, Chicago Circle Campus (1980-1982)
Sec. Ed Teaching Certificate, San Francisco State University (1985)
Associate of Applied Science Degree in Electronics, Heald Institute of Technology (1991)

He is 47 years old and was born in Urbana, Illinois.

Frank Garvey holds two research fellowships at Carnegie Mellon University, one at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry in the College of Art, the other in the Robotics Institute. He is also Adjunct Assistant Professor in Robotic Art at Carnegie Mellon University. He has spent the last 12 years creating, composing for, and directing the world's first robotic theater ensemble, the OmniCircus, in San Francisco. The OmniCircus features the experimental music group DeusMachina for which Garvey composes music, a ten-person resident troupe of actors and dancers, and the Robotic Ensemble of the OmniCircus, a unique group of twelve sophisticated electro-mechanical actors created by Garvey and long time OmniCircus collaborators Aaron Edsinger, Jeff Weber, Carl Pisaturo, and Eric Kenyon.

Television broadcasts, Internet and print articles and reviews about Garvey's work have appeared in numerous local, national, and international venues.

Garvey's main research interest is the creation of performance works incorporating robotics and music-dance-theatrical ritual.

More about The OmniCircus.

entertainment robotics and human-computer interaction

• The Robotic Performance Lab
• The Synthetic Performance Lab

• House of the Deafman - A performance work, a full-length robotic-integrated music-dance-theater piece about the Black Paintings of Francisco Goya, in collaboration with the Theater Dept. and other elements in the CMU community.
• Robotic Performer Research Project - We are developing new mechanical actors including 'Humper', with organic movements and interactivity exploring the social strategies of streetwalking, and 'Laugh Riot', a robotic Jack-in-the-Box whose purpose is the dissemination of false hope.
• Smart Theater Research Project - We are developing new technologies for a performance environment integrating state-of-the-art robotic performers with virtual reality sets and performers.
• Synthetic Performer Research Project - We are developing new strategies for the creation of virtual actors in the digital realm and the programming of 'actual' (robotic) synthetic equivilants through the animation of virtual actors.