When planners of a citywide exhibition of large, robotic art that starts this week asked Ian Ingram to submit a piece, he had one goal in mind.
"I wanted to make a robot that's as big as Pittsburgh," said Ingram.
So with a $10,000 grant, the 30-year-old Friendship resident built a sculpture that not only accomplishes his aim, but should strike a deep chord with sports-mad locals.
His contribution to Robot 250, an event starting Friday with the public debut of Ingram's and 10 other so-called "BigBots," is a giant foam hand in black and gold, one finger raised, with the lettering: "You're #1."
Mounted on the roof of the Andy Warhol Museum, the 12-foot finger will point to other big foam body parts -- an ear, a nose, a leg -- that Ingram will install miles away around the city.
As big as Pittsburgh, see?
If it stretches the definition of robot -- or art, for that matter -- that's the whole idea, said Illah Nourbakhsh. A professor at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, Nourbakhsh is the motivating force behind the effort to highlight Pittsburgh's connection to robotics during the city's 250th birthday celebration.
"We want people to question what they think a robot is, and to question who can make a robot," Nourbakhsh said. "I want people to think, 'I can make a robot.' "
Beginning last summer, he and other Robot 250 organizers have held workshops to help young students do just that. Some built motorized sculptures that move in response to light, noise or pollution. Others used the CMU-designed Gigapan robotic system to make enormous panorama photos of their neighborhoods. Several will be on display during the two-week festival, which is sponsored by the Heinz, Grable and Benedum foundations.
The BigBots will be at prominent city locations. At the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in Shadyside, an 8-foot plastic tube resembling a fat snake standing on its tail will track passers-by with its "head," and then do a comic double-take.
Another exhibit features 25 mechanical "crickets" in the garden of the Mattress Factory in the North Side. Each of the foot-tall robots is equipped with a wooden block it strikes, and each decides whether to do so based on what the other crickets are doing. Spectators will be able to control them, too.
With its rooftop perch, Ingram's finger looks likely to get the most attention. But perhaps the weirdest robotic sculpture is a kiddieland-sized roller coaster for plants.
The piece by CMU graduate students Gregg Witt and Joey Hays sends a three-car train of sedums, a leafy, drought-resistant wildflower, on a wild ride around a 120-foot outdoor track at the Children's Museum. Sensors in the cars will monitor the plants to figure out when they "want" to go again.
Witt and Hays readily admit the idea that plants have feelings that can be monitored from the electrical conductivity of their leaves -- a prospect raised in the 1973 book "The Secret Lives of Plants" -- is far-fetched.
"We're not that crazy," said Hays, 28.
Instead, the ride is a spoof on "green building," they said. Because plants are being utilized more and more in roofs and other architectural elements, the roller coaster is a way to reward them for their service.
"Hopefully, it won't seem like we're torturing them," said Witt, 29.
Most of the BigBots creators are local artists. Ingram until now has done much smaller pieces. Birds fascinate him, and he has made several contraptions of wire and feathers that are something like artificial birds.
So if a flock of pigeons decides to roost -- or worse -- on the big foam finger, Ingram said it'll be just ducky with him.
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