Robotic and Art

http://www.johanscherft.com/
Robotic and art may seemed as disjoint categories. However, in the modern society with the current technology, they are not completely different. In particular, robots are now appearing in abundance in work of arts like movies and paintings. Through the creativity of movie directors and artists, robots are presented to the audience with amazing functions. Of which, some may inspire science to progress to achieve those functionalities. For example, bionic limbs appeared much earlier in comics and TV shows/movie 6 Million Dollar Man than the actual thing(Misra). Moreover, robots nowadays can become artist themselves, with better technology, robots can be built to create art(RobotArt). This is really revolutionary where robotics were always thought as tools that only follows command without creativity. But now, we can have robots like AARON that paints(Moss). 

http://bionic.wikia.com/
Art is ever-growing and changing, especially with technology. But that brings negative impact as well. In particular in this week’s reading, the focus is on the reproduction and authenticity of the art. By Walter Benjamin, since the age of mechanical reproduction, the reproduced arts are losing the “aura” of the original work and is largely due to the uniqueness of the existence. By mass reproduction, the work of art can be presented to the larger population. Hence, people of different time and place get to see all those works of art at a huge quantity through a screen. Naturally,  people tend to be tired aesthetically and forget about the aura that the artists had put in their pieces. But have we really lost the aura of arts? I think because of the mass reproduction, people begin to value the aura of art once again. According to Douglas Davis, reproduced arts can take infinite forms(382). From viewing the different reproduced arts, viewer may process the message of the artists better, thus echoing the artist and valuing arts more.
http://www.mnn.com/

References:


Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

 Davis, Douglas. “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction”. The MIT Press, 1995. Web. 19 Oct.2012.http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1576221uid=3739560&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101286048881

 Misra, Ria. Gizmodo. “All The Times Science Fiction Became Science Fact In One Chart”. http://io9.gizmodo.com/all-the-times-science-fiction-became-science-fact-in-on-1570282491

 Moss, Richard. New Atlas. “Creative AI: The robots that would be painters”. http://newatlas.com/creative-ai-algorithmic-art-painting-fool-aaron/36106/

 RobotArt. “How can robots create art?”. https://robotart.org/more-info/


Comments

  1. UnknownApril 24, 2017 at 3:42 PM

    Hi Yifan,

    I found your post very well written. I enjoyed your discussion about how robots, though thought of as non-creative beings, are learning how to create art. Mechanization, the improvement of technology, has allowed the creation of robots and the mass production of art, resulting in a supposed devaluing of art. However, if creativity is instilled into robots, then perhaps it will usher in a new age of creativity. Additionally, when looking at the Van Gogh painting you included it caused me to truly comprehend the devaluing that has occurred. I remember seeing that painting in real life and my awe was gone as I had seen that replicated image so many times it wasn't even a big deal to me.

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