Week 3: Robotics + Art

Since the dawn of industrialization, what we perceive as art has changed dramatically, thanks ultimately to mechanization.  The explosion of personal computers and Moore’s Law in the latter half of the 20^th century further drove mechanization and computation to set the stage for a new type of masterpiece: robotics (Intel.com).

Vitruvian Man

What was once reserved for sculptures and paintings, humanoids became a new focus of idealized beauty.  During the Renaissance, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci focused on this idealized, perfect human form, as seen in his Vitruvian Man; but recently, humanoid designers have taken up this focus on realistic human idealization (Stanford.edu).  Dr. Dennis Hong, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCLA, has succeeded in this blending of art and science into CHARLI, “the United States’ first full-size autonomous human robot” (Hong).  CHARLI is able to walk in any direction, as well as kick, and perform several upper body tasks.  On top of all this, CHARLI is aesthetically pleasing to look at, and includes this idea of human beauty within robotics.

CHARLI

Iron Man

Another great example of this idea of blending an aesthetically pleasing robot in an idealized human form can be seen in the Iron Man movie series.  The Iron Man suit contains hundreds of “bells and whistles”, but does all of this in the form of a very large and muscular idealized human body.

While the increased mechanization and computing capabilities have made this new art form of robotics possible, some have argued that it has ultimately taken the originality out of art.  Walter Benjamin, in his “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, argues that mechanization has allowed for art to be reproduced so closely to its original form that there is no distinction between the real and reproduced; besides the fact that the original work includes the aura of the culture and time.  This mechanical reproduction ultimately destroys the authenticity of the art as the “unique existence” of the original work becomes lost (Benjamin).  Douglas Davis continues upon Benjamin’s work, further expanding on the idea that mechanization and computing has devalued, rather than enhanced, art (Davis).

References:

“50 Years of Moore's Law.” Intel, 2015, www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/silicon-innovations/moores-law-technology.html. Accessed 21 Apr. 2017.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. 1936.

Davis, Douglas. “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (An Evolving Thesis: 1991-1995).” Leonardo, vol. 28, no. 5, 1995, pp. 381-386.

Hong, Dennis. “CHARLI: Cognitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning Intelligence.” RoMeLa, UCLA, 2017, www.romela.org/charli-cognitive-humanoid-autonomous-robot-with-learning-intelligence/. Accessed 21 Apr. 2017.

“Leonardo's Vitruvian Man.” Stanford History, 2017, leonardodavinci.stanford.edu/submissions/clabaugh/history/leonardo.html. Accessed 21 Apr. 2017.