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(above Image: Shaun Slifer and Stuart Anderson's "Tumbleweed" Rossum's is a Pittsburgh based working group for robotic artists founded on the practical goal of helping each other develop ideas and skills. Out of this pragmatic aim are emerging ideas about embodiment, movement, and the role of technology. Art has always been embodied. But in the heady rush to the virtual, in the novelty of purely informational digital art, and our own cultural movement toward anapresence, an essential connection to the groundedness of physical reality has been lost. We long for digital artworks to regain the vitality of physical form. Rossum's is about the embodiment of digital art: presence, not telepresence; immediacy, not global connectivity; corporeal wholeness, not distributed everywhereness. Our works are meant to be interrogated by individuals present in their literal vicinity. They are immediate, not connected to the web, not telepresent in some other domain, but intimately concerned with the spaces they physically occupy. Embodiment gives digital artworks a physical form that matches the intent, the power, and the uniqueness of the work. Moreover, digital artworks need bodies so that the work itself can really "feel" the world and, more importantly, really be present in it, be able to take actions that are more than virtual, make movements that move molecules and not just electrons. Digital art resonates and expands in the richness of the tangible world. Mechanosphere was the Rossum's first show as a collective. Some of the work for this show was created as a gesture or behavior. Some sought to find its own way towards how it might exist in the world. Some were experiments in new forms which aspire towards dreams of truly thinking machines. All embrace their presence in the world, share our space, and partake of the subtle diet that is our corporeal existence. The Rossum's show "Mechanosphere" was mounted within the Three Rivers Arts Festival Gallery store front window and second floor space at 937 Liberty Avenue. The show will reflected the eclectic nature of the group, with a unifying theme of works which were "surprisingly animate." The show focused on new work and new revisions of ongoing projects.