MONDAY afternoon saw a courtyard full of robots doing a jerky dance from the 1980s and I joined them. The Kube (formerly Study Gallery) at Bournemouth and Poole College held a Guinness world record breaking attempt for the most people robot dancing at the same time.
The event was the brainchild of artist James Johnson Perkins who also has an exhibition at Kube, called Retro Robot. The exhibition runs until September 19 and features artwork made from the toys of his childhood like Lego bricks and early computer games.
The rules for the record attempt were very simple. Everyone must be dressed like a robot in some way and dance for five minutes in a robotic manner.
This meant a sea of cardboard and tin-foil automatons doing that strange little dance that England footballer Peter Crouch does when he scores.
For my part, I hastily assembled a futuristic costume consisting of bits of calculator, glitter and a fetching tin-foil sweatband/cravat combo.
Looking like a robotic Bjorn Borg, all I needed was a repertoire of killer dance moves to match. Luckily, artist James Johnson Perkins, 36, was on stage donning a giant robot head and demonstrating the dance steps.
An army of local school children, office workers and interested passers-by all attempted to break the current record, which stood at 276.
Surrounded by fancy dress robots of all shapes and sizes, we shuffled about in unison to a bleeping soundtrack from electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk and their song The Robots.
After five minutes of sweaty dancing, it later emerged that the record had not been broken as the attempt was missing seven robot dancers.
Despite the failure, James Johnson Perkins believes the launch of his latest exhibition was a success.
“It’s unfortunate that we didn’t break the world record, but everyone had a lot of fun today.
“I’ve lived out a fantasy that I probably would have liked to have fulfilled as a kid,” says James.
While not setting any new records, it was a visual spectacle the like of which Poole has not seen before or may see again.
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