Robotics + Art

            I was amazed to learn how long art and robotics have been coexisting and contributing to each other’s evolution. According to the Robotics + Art lecture by Victoria Vesna, artist have been drawing the physical structure of robots since the early 1900s that created industrialization. This machinery would become vital to mass production in many forms. One of the first successful machines prior industrialization was the printing press between 1440-1450. The creator Johannes Gutenberg was the first to mass produce the bible.
The knowledge of reproduction spread and since has become a form of open source for the public. With a little knowledge and a ton of effort people started to replicate their own printing systems and other machine based items. The explosion of mass production has continued for centuries and there is no sign of it slowing down. Cars, planes, art, weapons, clothes, food, almost anything we can think of is mass produced with the help of machines and assembly lines.
This mass productions has influenced and aided our civilization to grow. Although industrialization has helped our society, Walter Benjamin states “… mechanical reproduction can be brought may not touch the actual work of art, vet the quality of its presence is always depreciated” (Benjamin 1). He claim’s this mass reproduction is reducing the quality of art but other items do fit this statement as well. This is true to a certain extent; the quality does depreciate when items are mass produced but originality and authenticity still exist in many forms.

            Today there is a company called Arduino that allows people to artistically design their own mechanical project. Arduino provides downloadable software, hardware, and instructions from their website that can be used to make a project one might wish to start.  This company is assisting ordinary people to get involved with robotics, computer science, and art from your own personal home at a very low price. The robotic market that lead to industrialization is now at everyone’s fingertips. This open source foundation is a preview to some new innovations that may appear in the near future.
 References 
Banzi, Massimo.  How Arduino is open-sourcing imagination
https://www.ted.com/talks/massimo_banzi_how_arduino_is_open_sourcing_imagination

Benjamin, Walter. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Visual Culture:
Experiences in Visual Culture, 137-144.

Davis, Douglas. “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction.” The MIT Press, 1995. Web.
19 Oct. 2012.

Hanson, David. "Robots That "show Emotion"." David Hanson: Robots That "show Emotion" | TED Talk | TED.com. TED Conferences, Feb. 2009. Web. 22 Apr. 2017.

Vesna, Victoria. “Robotics pt1.mov.” Cole UC online. Youtube, 9 April 2012. Web. Accessed 22 April 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=153&v=cRw9_v6w0ew>


           


Comments

  1. SZTApril 25, 2017 at 10:43 AM

    I feel that Christian has made an interesting point by stating that quality has been sacrificed when mass production occurs. This issue arose due to the shift of power between the consumer and the producers. Before the industrial revolution, consumers would place orders before producers made said product for them. However, nowadays, producers produce their product at large quantities then move on to sell to consumers. Interestingly, with the advent of the Internet and 3D printing, the shift in power seems to be changing. A good example of would be the company Arduino, which the author of this blog brought up. Another example would be the resurgence of artisan, hand crafted goods, which are getting increasingly popular among the youth of today.

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  2. UnknownApril 27, 2017 at 2:15 PM

    I totally agree with what you said about Benjamin's criticism about robotics--that "originality and authenticity still exist in many forms." Benjamin, for example, criticizes photography in that there is technically no original copy since a person can simply print out as many copies of a photograph as they wish. However, I believe that photography is simply a different way of expressing oneself, of finding things to photograph, angles, lighting, exposures, etc. Just because many copies can be easily reproduced, does not mean that it is not any less original. The example that you use (Arduino) I believe perfectly demonstrates this viewpoint, because it allows people "to artistically design their own mechanical project" by way of robotics.

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