(10 Jan 2018) Even the erotic dancers have been taken over by tech as Las Vegas hosts the annual CES show. A pair of pole-dancing robots are performing at Sapphire Las Vegas Gentleman’s Club this week. The humanoid dancers are the work of London-based artist Giles Walker who made them several years ago in an exploration of voyeurism. But the art project in a local strip club also raises questions about sexism in the industry. “It’s associated with the fact that when I was building these, all these CCTV cameras were going up in London all over and they’re like kind of these mechanical kind of peeping toms on every street corner,” explains the robots’ creator Giles Walker. “And then at the same time the debate about who has the power, the dancer or the punter and I was playing with all these ideas.” Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club’s Peter Feinstein says he hired Walker’s robots because some people might not ordinarily feel comfortable in a strip club. “We were trying to appeal to a different audience who might say: ‘Oh that sounds fun’, he says. Walker says the project began when he found two surveillance cameras on a warehouse floor. He acknowledges that in bringing the robots to the strip club, for an undisclosed fee, the project has strayed from his initial vision. “If I build some pole dancers out of wind screen wiper motors and then eventually their end journey is the biggest strip joint in Las Vegas. It’s been a really strange journey but I think it kind of works for me in my head.”
