To start off my blog post for this week, I'd like to discuss the meaning of art in terms of robotics. I personally don't view the existence of a robot or technology to be a form of art, however I will say that there is an art in coding and engineering itself. I view that art to be more of a skill than a form of expression. Robots are typically created to serve a purpose, which I don't believe to be a component of art.
As mentioned in lecture, Marie Shelley's Frankenstein is a celebrated and well known example of technology-gone-wrong, and is one of the first in a trend of robot mishaps. One film that I'd like to mention that has generated a lot of attention for its artistic themes is
2001: A Space Odyssey. The movie follows a voyage to Jupiter in a ship with a sentient robot, Hal, who slowly takes control of the ship. The idea of robots expanded the realm of science fiction, creating new topics of conversation.
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Hal
http://ifaq.wap.org/posters/hal1.html
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The Arduino TED Talk celebrated the mass proliferation of robotics and technology through open source sharing, but what stood out about the speech to me was actually the ease of access for 3D printing. The invention of 3D printing has opened up many possibilities in health and science, but also endless avenues in the arts. Countless sculptures can be printed in place of other mediums which would take much, much longer, but 3D printed art is no less impressive than traditional.
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3D Printed Fashion
http://scarletchamberlin.com/2014/05/14/full-mooned-3d-printed-fashion/ |
This 3D printed piece by Luke Jerram is is actually a sculpture of a seismograph of the Tohoku earthquake that devastated Japan, "extract[ing] art and beauty out of that terrible event." This is a perfect example of art, science, technology, robotics, and mathematics all coming together. This piece is beautiful on its own (almost looks like an audio waveform which is why it caught my attention), but with the additional meaning of the tragic earthquake, it officially becomes a form of artistic expression. The seismograph is the unemotional math and numbers representation of the destruction in Japan.
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TÅhoku Japanese Earthquake Sculpture, Luke Jerram
http://www.pcworld.com/article/242954/catastrophe_becomes_art_with_3d_printing.html |
Bibliography
"Catastrophe Becomes Art With 3D Printing." PCWorld. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2016. <http://www.pcworld.com/article/242954/catastrophe_becomes_art_with_3d_printing.html>.
"Full Mooned: 3D Printed Fashion." Scarletchamberlincom. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2016. <http://scarletchamberlin.com/2014/05/14/full-mooned-3d-printed-fashion/>.
"HAL's Birthday." HAL's Birthday. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2016 <http://ifaq.wap.org/posters/hal1.html>.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Diana Gibson. Frankenstein. Madrid, España: Edimat Libros, 2000. Print.
"WHAT IS ARDUINO?" Arduino. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2016. <http://www.arduino.cc/>.
Hi Margaret! Your perspective on art being within the coding and engineering of robots/technology, rather than the existence of them, was really interesting to me. Such an idea is a bit different than what I'm used to hearing. However, I think you bring up a good point that, especially in something like robotics, artistic capabilities become a type of skill to develop something that has a purpose. Your example of 3D printed fashion certainly fit the bill and perspective you described!
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