Week 3: Robotics + Art

I always saw photography and painting as very similar in their forms. Certainly there are differences between the two, but I have never been able to articulate it. After this week’s reading, I see that the work of a painter stands at a natural distance from reality whereas the photographer is a more precise and specific view of reality (Benjamin 1935). Looking back at the evolution of art since the rise of industrialization, it’s most interesting to see how mechanization and robots were used in art and popular media.


Image 1: Hermes & Modern Communication


One of my favorite movies growing up was Baymax. With the setting being the metropolis of San Fransokyo (a hybrid of San Francisco and Tokyo), it is clear that the Japanese cultural fascination with automation and robotics is present. In this sense, I had a fun time understanding how cultural differences between the United States and Japan give rise to differing attitudes towards the place of robots in society. While the Japanese were obsessed with the idea of making humanoid robots, Americans were more concerned with the use of robots in industrialization and automation processes (Kusahara 2024). Tied with the industrial revolution in the US, were a number of films and pop culture media where robots served as the villains seeking to take power away from humans. For the Japanese, robots can play an important role in a variety of social settings. Their government is interested in the prospect of social robots that can provide care and companionship, the exact purpose of Baymax (Wagner 2009). In this case, I really enjoyed learning about this intersection of science, art, and culture.


Image 2: Baymax Official Art


Another subject that I enjoyed was learning about how robotics is used to imagine ‘natural’ evolution in art. One example of this is the rise of artificial life, which is defined as man-made systems which exhibit characteristics of natural systems (Moravec 2019). One of my research projects is on directed evolution of proteins. Similarly, it’s great to see how artists are using biological concepts to come up with artistic interpretations and technology to visualize these. Most promising to me is art that can react to its environment and change its behavior accordingly, which is being done by many artificial life programs (Rinaldo 1998). I wonder whether artificial life will be more synonymous to photography or painting.


Image 3: Insect Human Cyborg


Sources:

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Translated by J. A. Underwood, Penguin Books, 2008.


Kusahara, Machiko. “On Japanese Robotics.” DESMA9 Guest Lecture, 2024.  


Wagner, Cosima. “The Japanese way of robotics’: Interacting ‘naturally ’with robots as a national character?” RO-MAN 2009 - The 18th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, Sept. 2009.


Rinaldo, Kenneth E. “Technology recapitulates phylogeny: Artificial Life Art.” Leonardo, vol. 31, no. 5, 1998, p. 371. 


Moravec, Hans. "Human culture: a genetic takeover underway." Artificial Life. Routledge, 2019.


Images:

Magganas, Christos. Hermes. Digital Art Illustration, 1995.


Julius, Jessica. The Art of Big Hero 6. Chronicle Books, 2015.


Rinaldo, Ken. Insect Human Cyborg. Antonio Prates Gallery, 2022.

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