Week 3: Robotics and Art

I think that to begin a discussion about robotics and art, the term "robot" first needs to be defined. According to Merriam-Webster, "robot" has two definitions. The first is "a machine that resembles a living creature in being capable of moving independently and performing complex actions". The second is "a device that automatically performs complicated, often repetitive tasks". Both definitions will be valuable to the discussion of the connection between robots and art. 

I will begin the discussion of art and robots at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, as before this point in western history, robotics and art had little bearing on each other. Though disappointment could be levied against me for intentionally omitting other historical examples of robots that could be considered art, such as the mechanisms in an orrery, or the ability of a printing press to mass produce culturally influential materials, I think that its most conducive to treat the Industrial Revolution as the point when robotics and art began to cross paths (Vesna). I treat this as the turning point because it was here when mechanized mass production began in the west, the consequence of which inevitably resulted in the loss of individuality in both production and culture. 

Monet's Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/16571/arrival-of-the-normandy-train-gare-saint-lazare

When comparing Walter Benjamin's perspective with Douglas Davis's on the subject of whether the artistic landscape has been devalued by mechanization, it is apparent that the societal context of both authors, as well as the technological advances of their respective time periods, greatly influenced the conclusions at which they arrived. Benjamin, in his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", argues that the mechanical reproduction of a piece of art devalues what he refers to as the "aura", or individuality, of said piece (Benjamin). Despite the parallelism in his choice of title, Davis, in "The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction", poses that the mass reproducibility of art serves to benefit the dissemination and creation of new art, with a sort of memetic effect (Davis). 

Though it may appear as if the two authors embody two very polarized viewpoints, cultural context is vital to understand Benjamin's thesis. Specifically, his argument was derived from the questioning of the aestheticization of politics as opposed to the politicization of art during pre-World War Two Nazi Germany, and includes considerations of Marxist ideology and the belief in the ability of technological innovation to change the value of art. Though I am tempted to divert the focus of this blog post towards a critique of the intersection of politics and art as a culture itself, and at length criticize postmodern western society's abuse of art for political motive, I will not. Instead, I'll focus on how Davis is tackling a very different topic from Benjamin, one that is much more relevant to the modern day: copyright law. 

Copyright law, for all it's flaws, has done much good for the dissemination of art over technological spheres, as it protects the intellectual property of the copyright holder while still protecting others who may use images or characters for their own purposes, as long as they abide by certain conditions. Though the discussion of copyright may seem tangential to the concept of robotics and art, it is vital to recognize that the internet has become its own robot. It's a largely self-sustaining ecosystem that, at the press of a button, can churn out more copies of an image than all the pages physical printers have produced in the history of mankind. The advent of the internet allowed for media to shared en masse, reproduced, altered, and reimagined with boundless scope. With it, came change in the nature of art that embodies both Benjamin's and Davis's arguments. 

Gondola: The result of a decades 
worth of memetic abstraction

The mass reproducibility of content on the internet has absolutely removed the importance of the "aura" of a piece of art. In fact, it is nigh impossible to trace back many images to their original source, due to both the anonymity of the internet and its iterative nature. However, this resulted in an even greater emphasis on the "aura" of all art existing beyond the boundaries of the internet. Performance arts such as theatre, acrobatics, magic, or even street art the likes of Banksy, are held in much higher regard by consumers. Now, these things possess even greater value because they're not reproducible by a robot; it is art that exists beyond machines, able to only be fully appreciated in its truest, most genuine form. In essence, scarcity has caused demand. 

Banksy's Love is in the Bin

The value and importance of art has evolved alongside technological innovation, and there is no reason to assume that it will not continue to do so. In the future, not if, but when the aura of art can be reproduced through simulations and chemical application, what would then be the value of art? When all things are infinitely reproducible, when indeed there is no distinction between manmade and machine-generated art, from what will art derive value? We would be foolish not to study history to see how automation and robotics has changed both the industrial and social landscape, and to not realize that these effects will inevitably repeat themselves as time passes. 

References

Banksy. Love is in the bin. Art intervention. 2018. wikipedia.org, 
            https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/Love_is_in_the_Bin.jpg

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Penguin Books, 2008.

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. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1576221. Accessed 16 Apr. 2021.

Dillhof, Raphael. “Looking Behind the Curtains - The Mass Production of Art.” Widewalls, 7 Mar. 2017, www.widewalls.ch/magazine/contemporary-art-production.

Llopis, Glenn. “Shift Focus From Brand Identity To Individual Identity In The Age Of Personalization.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 6 Sept. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2019/09/07/shift-focus-from-brand-identity-to-individual-identity-in-the-age-of-personalization/?sh=85b5341c264e.

Monet, Claude. Arrival of the Normandy Train Gare Saint-Lazare. 1877. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.  Artic.edu, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/16571/arrival-of-the-normandy-train-gare-saint-lazare

“Robotics pt1.” YouTube, UC Online, 15 Apr. 2012, youtu.be/cRw9_v6w0ew.

Unknown. Untitled. Digital image.