Christopher Flannery - Week 3

I was overwhelmed by the material this week because we covered so many different topics, and mostly only on the surface. A lot of the class time, I felt like I was scribbling notes too slowly and the slides changed before I could fully digest them.
It was interesting to look at industrialization and modern thought from the viewpoint of the artist. Having been comfortable with the idea since childhood, it’s hard to imagine that people lacked understanding of perspective. It makes me wonder how differently they perceived other things like music, taste, and literature. How much do we comprehend? Art can invoke a lot of philosophical questions (like how Descartes was mentioned in class). The history we covered in class tied in to Buckminster Fuller’s article describing how man spread across the globe and learned. His description was very removed and broad; it was more a metaphorical commentary on human nature and attitude towards our planet and each other.
Like most other people on this blog agree, I don’t think that the artist being a step removed from the actual production of the composition takes anything away from the worth of the project. Creating art for mass production should be thought of as distinct from what is called “fine” art. I see it as having more in common with engineering and architecture, along with a lot of artistic insight. With modern tools, every object we create is a product of art and technology. Technology amplifies the art.
It’s kind of odd reading two articles written generations ago about the present. I feel like a lot of the points that Walter Benjamin made in his essay were learned early on by my generation. We all learned that photography and film are forms of art and it doesn’t occur that they may be any lesser because of the different processes and media. The current generation accepts technological art equally and easily.
Searching the internet, I found this forum called ARChives, and a particular post discussing mass-produced art, including skillfully hand-made copies of classic painting and other machine-made art forms. The author’s points include the utilitarianism and precision of the modern techniques.
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2003/Best_of_ARC/best1.asp?msg=588&forumID=27

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What is art? - Week 3 - Section 4

During discussion last week the question of “What is art?” came up. It makes me wonder if anything with a creative touch can be called art, but just like how beauty is in the eye of the beholder, art is also subjective.

I really like the idea of teleart, especially the telegarden introduced to us last week in lecture. It mixes the classic beauty of flowers in a garden with the scientific aspect of a robotic arm. I also like the concept of how the garden is managed by hundreds of people through the internet. Without cooperation between all the users the garden would not bloom. It is an interactive kind of art that puts the user in control of the piece. They can pick the flowers and have to take care of them, which ultimately determines which flowers grow and don’t. It’s has taken kinetic art to the 21st century.

While searching for more examples of teleart on the internet I came across TeleDoodle from Toys-R-Us (http://www.toysrus.com/sm-tele-doodle--pi-2335105.html#prod_prodinfo). It’s a doodling machine for little kids that allows them to create art on the TV. I think it’s pretty cool for kids to have different ways to express their creative side, especially since that generation is already so tech-savvy.

I loved Ken Rinaldo’s robotic sculptures that involved the interaction between the beta fish. With the augmented fish reality I thought that from far away the structure itself could serve as a modernized plant pot/aquarium. But then up-close and while in motion it becomes a little robo-vehicle for the fish. Just like the telegarden, this installation depends on interaction, just this time instead of users on the internet; it’s the fish in the bowl.

Honestly, I’ve always had a traditionalist viewpoint on art. Sculptures, paintings, photographs, etc. in museums where you look and don’t touch is what I have previously considered to be art. And I am guilty to have looked at non-traditional art and think “That’s weird. Who thinks this is art?” With this class however it has really opened my eyes on what could be considered art. With kinetic art, teleart, and interactive pieces I have discovered a sense of amazement and awe. I love the idea of interaction and how the audience can be a piece of the artwork, even in a little way, such as the telegarden. I think I have a new found appreciation for how versatile art can be.

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ROBOTS ARE OUR FRIENDS (and more) -> week3 -> megan daalder

Machine and humans are friends nowadays. Everyday I see them ported around in pouches with the same tenderness a mother kangaroo shows to a baby Joey; they’re our constant companions. Our minds flow into the machine through our fingertips, a McLuhenesque extension of what’s usually contained within our skulls. The machines that once sucked us into their oppressive clutches like they did Chaplin in modern times, have since been redeemed by the computing devices and pacemakers that have proven themselves worthy of being inside the home, and the body.



It seems most people are comfortable with the wide variety of cyborgs who walk among us on a daily basis, you could go as far as to say that anyone who drives a car becomes superhuman the minute they step into the beast and speed off at 60+ miles per hour without breaking a sweat (unfortunately the environment is feeling that energy being expended right now in a much more severe way than your average muscle ache). In any case, it’s interesting to see how humans and machines are growing more comfortable with one another. In Japan, heaps of time and money go into developing robots that are not only cute, but also capable of caring for the large population of aging individuals, from robot therapy, to robot sponge baths, to cleaning robots, to (ehem) spoon-feeding robots (cough, modern times?).



Though I am being slightly idealistic (that’s slightly) about our future with robots, I think some of the most interesting artwork, research, etc to come out of our current relationships with machines is collaborative, as opposed to one taking control of the other. If the industrial revolution marked a period of mechanic enslavement, than today represents a period of computational collaboration. Reas is one example of someone working with the machine to produce works of art, Ken Goldberg uses robotics and the web to create a community garden for people living in disparate regions of the world, the wifiSense bag embeds the transient connectivity that we travel trough daily into a wearable item, the WhereIsGeorge? project allows a community of people to track their money as it travels through hands and across the country. It’s all about the connection of people, ideas, objects and translation of data that is invisible to something that is visible, or tangible in some way.



Though the Transhumanists and Stelarcs of the world may want to leave their bodies behind and live in the machine, I think the machine can be used to heighten ones experience of the physical world. Machines can do many things that people cannot, and likewise, people can do many things that machines cannot, so why not take advantage of emerging technologies that allow us to get the best of both worlds.



Ah, this is the zenith of creative potential! I want to build a communal thinking cap - put EEG sensors on 10 people’s heads at once and feed it to a computer, then somehow output the data, put them on different tracks in some custom music editing software and sonify them and play them as a sweet sweet song. That’s not the very best idea, but there are many, many many many and I’m excited to be here.

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John "Matt" Ko - Week 3

The Industrial Age played a huge role in forming what we now know as art. Things like the printing press, factories, and eventually even computers all change the way we use, look at, and treat art. The printing press was the first opportunity for men to easily reproduce their writings. But along with that I would say that this was probably the start of type as art. I would venture to say that at this point people arranging the type for the printing presses were thinking about how to make the print visually appealing. And so the type would have been designed a specific way, arranged a specific way, and so on. You could also say that this led to what we see today in advertising and the use of type in graphics design. One website that I know of that uses type in a creative way is http://www.typorganism.com. It gives browsers the opportunity to interact with type art, experiencing it at home.

This wouldn’t have even been possible were it not for the invention of the computer, and the internet. No one thought that computers would become such a common household appliance. They used to take up entire rooms, but now just about every household has one. With the introduction of the internet, computers then became tools to easily broadcast works of art from the convenience of the home. One no longer has to travel to a gallery to view famous works of art. Computers are also used to compose works of art. From things like graphics design, computer animation, and web design to things like Casey Reas’ work.

Machine shops, another product of the industrial age, also bring new light to art. There are aspects of design in the production of anything from water bottles to cars. Not only that, but mechanical production brought to mind the idea of the robot, and has inspired many art forms. Robots have been portrayed in things like comic books, and many have produced metal works that are supposed to resemble robots, though they do not have any automated functions. However, there are certain things that actually are robots that I’m not so sure should be considered art. Things like the mechanical third arm and that big machine show of destruction maybe useful or entertaining, but I don’t think that I would consider them to be art.

I’m more interested in machines like the mechanical wooden mirror made by Daniel Rozin, or the LED art by Paul Klotz. Things that just either change the way traditional art is made or the medium it is presented on can be called art to me. These are welcome advancements to me. This is probably because of my desire to view things aesthetically pleasing.

I also found the concept of circuit bending interesting. Taking what one would normally consider music, and changing it in various ways. Again, I can’t bring myself to fully validate it as art, because it is not as pleasing to the ear as regular music, but the creativity is definitely there.

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Week 3-Eddison Lai-Industrialization to robotic art

In high school history classes, I learned about industrialization. But it wasn’t until this week that I viewed it in as the advancement of art. It started with things like steam power and textile manufacturing. Then, the second industrial revolution came with the electrical power generation and assembly lines. I was taught to believe that the technology only benefited the economy but I have come to realize that if the technological advances that came from the industrial revolution hadn’t come forward, a great faction of art would not be available today.!!! Nowadays, in addition to the classic arts, like painting and sculpting, and many other art forms, we have kinetic and robotic art. Kinetic art is said to be sculptures that contains moving parts. People believe that the “Bicycle Wheel” by Marcel Duchamp was the first piece of Kinetic Art. He and many others who followed took already existing parts and put them together, making a connection between audience and artwork. I believe that these early interactive pieces have paved the way for much the modern work we see today including Stelarc’s human machines and Ken Goldberg’s “Telescope Garden.” I like kinetic art because it takes art to another dimension. It requires more senses than just sight to appreciate it’s significance. It brings in movement and audience interaction that paintings and photography cannot.


Robotic art uses a lot of computer programming, sensors, and actuators. In the movies, we see a lot of artificial intelligence. “Star Wars” was good example with R2D2 and C3PO. Although many movies had the idea of robots and androids, they consisted mainly of humans in suits pretending to move robotically. In real life, we aren’t that close to Hollywood’s version of artificial intelligence.
Much of the robotic art in today’s society is focused around toys. Sony has a line of AIBOs, which are robotic pets that interact with each other. Honda came out with the ASIMO, a life size robot aimed to give schoolchildren an insight on engineering. http://www.honda.co.jp/ASIMO/

Other sectors of robotic art include such pieces as Survival Research Lab’s shows and robotic painting. I for one am not particularly pleased when I hear the destruction and chaos that SRL shows have to offer. They may be considered art but I am for sure not a person who would enjoy this kind of art. Robotic painting on the other hand is quite amusing. It is not very artistic in terms of the final product; most of it is just random colors and marks, however, there are a few pieces which I can appreciate for it’s attempt of spontaneity.

Even though Professor Sean Dockray was totally off topic in his lecture, I do appreciate his work. Through much of the lecture he basically just showed a lot of pictures and videos. I like his pieces where audiences get to interact, especially the cabinet piece. I appreciate what he showed us on circuit bending and also was amused by his insights on collective intelligence. I am curious to experience whether it is true that a group’s median is better than a expert’s word. Circuit bending seems like a promising art. It isn’t as painful to hear as SRL’s shows. Also, circuit bending only takes memory, common sense, and a few toys to get started. !!!

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The Message of Art (Kelly Banh, Week 3)

This week, I chose to identify one specific idea that stood out to me from Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In passage two, he wrote, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership.” This quote was significant to me because I feel that as a painter, even my finished works of art continue to be a blank slate. Most cannot comprehend this. However, Benjamin’s quote conveys exactly what I mean by this. He basically says here that an original piece of work captures the experience of the artist, and perhaps their every mistake that makes the piece unique. Obviously, original pieces are far more valuable then replicates. For example, an original painting versus the prints that a company may reproduce for sales. His mention of time and space in this quote, for me, refers to the influences of the stimulus present in his environment that may have played a huge role in the creation of the piece. Often, due to the environment in which I choose to paint, my pieces will appear to take on the atmosphere of the location I am in, my mediums will change based on the weather, temperature, and time allowance, and how meticulous I am while composing will depend on the mood I, myself, am in. The last line of this quote means that a traveling piece of art, whether through time or through owners, will carry along the physical imprints that it receives from each phase of “life.” Only the original can capture such a quality. I know this firsthand because the paintings I mail home to my mom will often endure indentations and scratches from poor packaging and luggage damage during air travel. In that, we can remember from looking at those scratches and indentations that they were gifts to my mom which I mailed home to her from school. Therefore, the scratches and indentations represent the event of the separation between my mom and I while I am away at college. This is a rather simplistic explanation and example for Benjamin’s quote, but I feel that it delivers the same message. Every change which a piece of work takes on physically after it is already done continues to add to the meaning of the artwork. This is what I meant by “even my finished works of art continue to be a blank slate.” Art is never truly at a resting state in my eyes. We are used to hearing about people adopting new interpretations of pieces of art, but very rarely do we note the physical changes that artwork undergoes and the fact that that, too, gives artwork a new meaning and more stories to tell. Art delivers a message.

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alexfleming - Week 3 -Technologies Contribution to Art

Week after week this class has me questioning what is art? My perspective has completely changed. I used to see art as a painting, photograph, drawing... but now it seems almost anything has some artistic form. Last weeks Mathematics and Art completely changed how I viewed art and also how I viewed math. I had a greater appreciation for both. I was able to realize how closely related the two subjects can be.
This weeks Industrial Age, Kinetic Art and Robotics topics have done the same; opened up my eyes to an entirely new perspective of art. Along with the Industrial Age and advancement in technology has come the advancement in different forms of artwork. Technology is being used to not only create art but new forms of art as well. The topic of a relationship between Robotics and Art was hard for me to grasp in the beginning but after doing some research on the Internet I came to find that it was actually quite common.

I found that there was a Robotic Art workshop where people could come watch and interact with robotic art.

Kinetic art, a form of art connected with the industrial age, was easier for me to understand. I was also surprised at how many books, websites and photographs I found pertaining to the subject.
Benjamin Walters article, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" again raised the question of what is art? Now that artwork was becoming so easy to replicate, and replication were becoming more exact, what was the importance of original artwork? Is authentic artwork special anymore? I believe that because of mechanical reproduction and its ability to exactly replicate original art people have lost appreciation to those authentic pieces. The art is available to the masses, it looses its uniqueness and therefore is depreciated by the public. Reproducing artwork causes a lack of appreciation towards the original artwork, and also causes the original artwork to loose its unique specialness because it is available to masses.
Reproduction of Art, Technology of Art, Kinetic Art, Robotic Art...has all greatly changed my opinion of what I believe art is and how I value art. Human talent and creativity shown through work is admirable art in my opinion.

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Ross Goldman - Section 3

Honda's Asimo robot has become nearly iconic by some standards as today's image of a humanoid robot. Perhaps more interesting than the technology itself is the way in which Honda's marketing has been focused on portraying Asimo as the "People-Friendly Robot" that comes in a "small, useful size." They are very careful not to frighten or threaten humans by using this kind of language, yet after seeing what Asimo can do (and understanding the AI behind it), it is a little scary at the least.

You can learn more about Asimo here:
http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/



Another interesting robot, though lacking the fame and stardom of Asimo, is the Sawfish. This unique robot saws down trees under water with its 54-inch-long chain saw and then hauls them off to dry land. Not only is the process cheaper than traditional logging, it is more environmentally sound. Typical deforestation contribtes to global warming, among countless other issues. Underwater logging lacks many of these harmful effects.

And finally, one last note on fractals: one group of artists who continue to astound and entertain with their hybrid art-science performances is the Blue Man Group.



Although some may argue that they are simple money-hungry entertainers pandering to the masses, there are many brilliant uses of science and technology that can be found in their art. From the simple - PVC pipes of different lengths and diameters make up a new instrument, to the complex - synchronized, interactive LED displays in the audience and chemical-based drumming, they innovate. Interestingly, they have dedicated a large chunk of their research and performance to fractals. Their performances are not to be missed.

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Alexander Yeh; week 3 ; Guitar Smashing Art

I was not very impressed by Professor Sean Dockery’s works at first with his circuit-bending exploits. It did not seem to me that his piece was innovating nor did I consider it to be art. It was very predicable exactly what sound would be created when he connected two circuits together. Any electrical engineer would be able to make the calculations necessary to do this. He was merely undoing much of the signal processing that is done by the original engineers of the keyboard to create his “new” sounds. However, I was much more impressed by his installation with paper tape and President Bush’s speeches. The piece truly takes advantage of interaction with the audience and the cranking of the machine by the audience cannot be replaced by a motor while having the same effect.

Furthermore I do not consider the Robot Paintings to be true kinetic art. To me, it was more algorithmic art than kinetic art. The instructions that the robots have when painting as well as the algorithms that the robots use in painting the pictures could be considered the art. The robots that paint might as well be computer printers. Given the same set of instructions, just like a printer, the robots would create the exact same piece.

What impressed me most was the loud, destructive art from artists such as Survival Research Labs. The pieces really show society’s fixation with destruction. I had not thought before that a German WWII V1 rocket being ignited in public could be considered art but thinking about the reactions of the audience, I believe that it is in fact art. Gustav Metzger’s Manifesto on Auto-Destructive art tells what destructive art is all about. The most notable portion of the manifesto is the part, “Auto-destructive art is the transformation of technology into public art. The immense productive capacity, the chaos of capitalism and of Soviet communism, the co-existence of surplus and starvation; the increasing stock-piling of nuclear weapons - more than enough to destroy technological societies; the disintegrative effect of machinery and of life in vast built-up areas on the person,...” I believe that destructive art is the most effective art form in showing the true nature of what society has become with its new capabilities with industrialization. According to the site http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr225/jones.htm, Gustav Metzger came to the United States as a refugee from the holocaust after his whole family was exterminated in the holocaust, and this is what probably led to Gustav’s criticisms of society. The site http://vienna.metblogs.com/archives/2005/05/gustav_metzger.phtml tells that most of his art works centered on the nuclear arms race in the 1950s and 60s and environmental destruction. Metzger did not only tackle the high profile topics of society’s self-destruction, but also focused on practices in the art community. For example, he once added a layer of acid in a painting to so that it would slowly disintegrate in order to protest the replication of art. His influence was wide. Interestingly, it was also Gustav Metzger who inspired the guitars smashing of Pete Townshend in the band The Who.

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Lisa Yang - Week 3

Coming into this class I had no background in any art whatsoever, so I thought. As the class progresses however, I am discovering that art can take many forms, shapes, styles, etc…

I never really thought about math playing a huge role in the field of arts. But after lecture last week I’ve learned that math is fundamental to certain forms of art. I took basic computer programming in the past so I do recall using very basic math to create very basic programs. It is very intriguing to me that with that very basic math I was using or perhaps just tweaking the numbers and operations a little, certain forms or patterns can be created, thereby producing a work of art. Even that is considered art! So perhaps I do have some background in art with the little programs I wrote that produced those very basic shapes, figures, and forms.

Moreover, as society progresses we will likely see the advancement of technology and with that, the advancement of human life. Artists are even utilizing these new avenues to produce new forms of art, like those videos we saw in class for example. But more specifically technology advancement is helping reduce human effort all around. Whether that is a good or bad thing, I am not sure. But we saw this during the industrial revolution when Ford began to use programmed machinery or some form of “robotics” on their assembly lines. And these new technologies even fall into the field of art.

I was most amazed by the concept of the telegarden. For this “robotic” garden to be considered art is hard to grasp, but the telegarden could be considered a fusion of art and science. As art progresses also, it is being produced and intermixed with all other fields. We talked about this in both lecture and discussion. Whether art will lead science or vice versa, only time can tell, but meanwhile the idea of robotics as an art is indeed fascinating.

By just typing in robotics into a search engine on the net, I got plenty of hits. What I found that most fits along these lines (art/science/human advancement) is how NASA has its own department devoted to robotics and what it can do for space exploration. The website is here: http://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/

I find all of this to be interesting, considering that I came into this class not knowing what to expect and not knowing how to view the different types of art forms that we’ve discussed so far this quarter. I always looked at art being the traditional artwork worth millions of dollars to be mounted on the wall for display with pride and joy and not even thought about it as computer programmed machinery that can produce certain types of art or the programmed machinery itself being an art form. This goes to show how much impact art has on human life.

What is art then? It can be many things as we’ve learned. There is traditional, classical art, then modern art, and now with robotics and cybernetics, even more modern art? Whatever it is, this new era is still unfolding with new artists like Professor Sean Dockray and I’m excited to see what else can be deemed “art.”

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Jamie Summers - Week 3

The interesting question of robotic art was raised in lecture this week. In my opinion, these works are still art. You might say that art is created based on inspirations and things that move somebody, so when a robot creates art, is it not in fact art because a robot cannot be emotional moved by anything. I disagree.

Just because a robot is doing the actual brush strokes, somebody had to make the robot, and somebody had to program the robot so that it knows what to do. So, according to this argument, robotic art is in fact still art produced by the programmer. For example, lets say that a painter paints a painting. This painting is so exquisite and so beautiful that he gets many offers to buy it. He wants to sell the painting to everyone who gave him an offer, so he hires a programmer to program a robot to replicate his exact brush strokes. With this, the painter himself is allowed to paint another picture, as well as the robot. The robot in this case is just replicating the art that was originally created by the painter. If one says that robotic art is not art, then in this case they are saying that the painting that the painter painted is not art. A second example is the assembly line for cars. Cars can be considered a work of art. Even if you disagree, you must agree that a car design is intricate and requires a large amount of creativity. Car assembly lines produce anywhere from 40-70 cars per hour during production, and without the help of robots, this would not be possible. Since robots aid in the production of cars, and a making a car is considered art, then robots themselves are making art. Even if you do not believe that a car is a work of art, you must admit that the initial inspiration and creativity of the designer is not lost simply because the car was made by a machine.

On a completely separate note, I found a related exhibit not of art created by robots, but art created out of robots. http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/009466.php I suppose this exhibit utilizes the innovations of the industrial age as mentioned in the reading “The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction” as well as the innovations of the information age as a new medium for creating art.

In this particular piece, I feel like the artist is creating a connection between the unemotional, mechanical world of robots and the emotion-driven world of humans. I find it to be a bit disturbing because although it seems as if the robots are locked in a passionate embrace, it also looks as if the machines behind them are forcing them to kiss.

It seems as though they are being pushed together against their wills. It is interesting that such a stereotypically unemotional machine can be used as an artistic medium that can evoke such strong emotions in its viewers.

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Jacob Janco - Week 3- Section 3 - Consciousness, Robotics, and Stellarc

The guest lecturer on Wednesday, Sean Dockray, while a bit scattered in his lecture materials, I believe drew a great bridge between the robotics and art we have dealt with this week and next week’s lectures on artificial intelligence. One of his main points was the emergent properties of smaller pieces and particles. He touched on the issue in a number of seemingly disparate examples of ant colonies being treated as organisms, the inherent complexity in traffic networks, and termite colonies among other things. Taking his eclectic exploration of emergent property to the next level, linking it to robotics and artificial intelligence and art is quite simple. Emergent property is indeed a “weird science” as Dockray eloquently put. Quantum mechanics break down once you begin to move into the macroscopic world, a cookie certainly tastes better than its constituent ingredients. Similarly, our brains are vastly complex networks of neurons that function in ways that have yet to be understood, but somehow from this mass of fat and neural tissue arise consciousness. The guest lecturer on Wednesday, Sean Dockray, while a bit scattered in his lecture materials, I believe drew a great bridge between the robotics and art we have dealt with this week and next week’s lectures on artificial intelligence. One of his main points was the emergent properties of smaller pieces and particles. He touched on the issue in a number of seemingly disparate examples of ant colonies being treated as organisms, the inherent complexity in traffic networks, and termite colonies among other things. Taking his eclectic exploration of emergent property to the next level, linking it to robotics and artificial intelligence and art is quite simple. Emergent property is indeed a “weird science” as Dockray eloquently put. Quantum mechanics break down once you begin to move into the macroscopic world, a cookie certainly tastes better than its constituent ingredients. Similarly, our brains are vastly complex networks of neurons that function in ways that have yet to be understood, but somehow from this mass of fat and neural tissue arise consciousness.

The classical robot is one that obeys the laws set out for it to follow. It can walk, jump, skip, and talk, but only if told to do so by a human programmer. Even random mathematical algorithms only offer an illusion of spontaneity as manifest in the robot’s actions. Humans are what we refer to as sentient beings. We make our choices based on complex sets of experience that are by no means able to be delineated into laws nor are they at all random. This is where artificial intelligence comes into play and the idea that robots can attain sentience and consciousness. It is the nightmare of Frankenstein and the dreams of today’s science fiction writers and movie directors. Is consciousness just a byproduct of the complexity of neural networks, or is it a separate entity in and of itself? Is consciousness a property that must be quantified with a new branch of science? These questions are as much a part of neuroscience today as studying, say, the neuroanatomy of a schizophrenic patient.

There is quite a huge debate over what exactly consciousness is. If we were able to fully understand the processes governing the construction, maintenance, and utilization of our brains, could we potentially create life forms or mechanical objects that have a “soul?” If we could work out the processes and cast them into fiber, metal, and plastic would we be able to synthesize a human? Conventional science answers this question quite simply. If we could know all there is to know about the human body, more specifically the function of our brains, then it is absolutely possible to create a life form that possesses our conceived notions of consciousness and awareness. It is an eerie prospect to be certain.

While on the topic of bridging the gap between robotics and artificial intelligence, it is impossible to forget about the crazy Australian Stellarc. He is indeed years ahead in his thinking, and furthermore entertains ideas that create a new sort of bridge. His bridge, much like how art and science look to be integrated, consists of a connection between the body and the mechanic. He takes this to the extreme level by saying that the “body is obsolete,” which is foolish, but his 20th century consumer electronics rhetoric certainly incites some controversy. The idea of robotic implantation and integration of man and machine is the stuff of science fiction writers, but as mentioned in lecture these outlandish ideas so often materialize in reality. Stellarc’s work is that of a butcher, the integration is rudimentary and shocks rather than forwards scientifically his ideas of embracing the machines that we have created. These body implants are already evolving. Monkeys can control dots on a screen with electrode implants in their brain. A recent, and more exciting development is that of aural and visual implants that can cause the deaf to hear and the blind to see. The one shown in class, the visual brain implant, is extraordinarily rudimentary, but is still considered cutting edge science. Basically, the implant stimulates the visual cortex and the patient “sees” the input of the electronic eye. This input consists of phosphene dots against a black background. They allow the user to discern between different physical objects. I take the same attitude toward this as I do to the mechanization of flight. A seemingly useless, short flight at Kittyhawk led to mind boggling amounts of change to our world over one century. I myself hope to contribute to this field in some way as a neuroscientist and possibly surgeon. I find it fascinating, and as mentioned in lecture, the field certainly does scratch some of the itches that science fiction has placed into my head.

Back to consciousness as a lead in to next weeks lectures. Here is a proposal for a Theory of Consciousness by Crick and Koch, the former is the famous discoverer of DNA structure. Most of those I have talked to would not consider consciousness to be debatable in the realm of science- that is an endeavor relegated to philosophers and to some degree psychologists. Consciousness is indeed a huge, looming shadow that evades proper quantification and is a problem for neuroscientists exploring the function of the brain.

http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/SC/B/C/F/D/_/scbcfd.pdf

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Tygue Luecke-Week 3- Art, Robotics, Opinions, Etc...

Before I go into a discussion of this week's material, I would like to make a quick note on the idea of stereotypes. At Mendelbrot's speech on Monday, I could not help but notice all the stereotypical mathematicians and "mad" scientist types. Anyone else happen to notice that? It is unfortunate that such stereotypes should be so negative when they are so often rue, or at least often based firmly on the truth. Maybe if they just weren't used for in negative ways...

Now onto the robotics- I noticed in section how much the question of What is Art?" came up. And I just don't know what to do with that, considering how pointless it would be to try to define art. Still though, when we discuss huge, pointless machines destroying each other for an audience, once can hardly question what it is that makes art art.While, as I have mentioned before, this notion is deserving of discussion, I feel like far too many artists devote their work to just that idea. I suppose it may teach us something to test a society's idea of art and compare it to that of another societies'; however, I just don't think we can learn a whole lot more from all the overabundance of artists who still insist upon basing their work on this unanswerable question.

This brings me to the work of Stelarc. Excuse me if I offend anyone, but I just cannot approve of his work. First of all, while I mostly understand the point he's trying to make, I'm pretty sure the body is NOT obsolete. Just because he is able to make machines that can perform the work of the human body does not mean that he no longer needs his body. The day that he is able to build his robots without the use of his body is the day that he can claim that the body to be obsolete. And what was the point of hanging his body from hooks? That proves NOTHING, save that he's a bit crazy. I just don't get it. So please, if someone DOES know what was up with that, let me know.

Check out this article:



Here's JUST another artist pushing the boundaries of art. REALLY, this is NOT necessary. Now, whenever this question comes up again, I am going to be tempted just to say no. NO, it is NOT art. What is the point in pushing it this far? Back in the day when art was seen ONLY as paint on canvas and sculpture, asking this question would have ACTUALLY been relevant. But in the days when people put blood and urine in a jar with a crucifix and call it art, the point is LOST!

Really, though, what do you people think about this? Do you guys think there's any point in asking the "what is art" question? What can we do with this nowadays? I'm sorry. I'm just so sick of it now. Well, this blog has become just a bit too opinionated. I apologize. I will make sure the title reflects this.

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Andrew Modlin, Week 3, Section 2, Kenetic Art

Ever since I was a child I have always had an interest in kinetic sculpture. One of my favorite artists has always been Alexander Calder. I remember going to museums around the country with my father to see his works. My favorite works of his were always the circus animals. For some reason they always seemed to be just so random that they were incredible. I would assume that this is some of the earlier form of kinetic sculpture. I have found these to be so amazing because of the way that they were constructed. All hand made out of wire and metal, they are meticulously configured to get the perfect type of movement and balance.

Here is a preview of the Circus http://www.nga.gov/education/classroom/counting_on_art/popups/calder.avi

When Calder would perform the circus a lot of crazy things would happen. He would have wire animals jump out of the air and land perfectly on a single wire. Or fake traipses artists swing across the stage and grab hold of one another. These feats seem impossible but though the precision Calder put into these pieces it could happen. I always found this type of art interesting because it was so different from any other sculptures that were being shown anywhere. Also the amount of effort that must have gone into perfecting a figurines jump must have been extraordinary.

This is how I feel about all of Calder’s works. I have also been fascinated by his mobiles. To see a Calder mobile in person is a magnificent experience. The way the move thought the air with perfect balance is an extraordinary sight. It is extremely impressive the Calder was able to do all these sculptures with out the uses of computers or anything; it was shear skill that allowed him to prefect these works.

I found these works to been very different yet similar to Stelarc’s works. In many of the projects on Stelarc’s web page it can be seen that his works are mostly robots. He has taken kinetic art to the next level. The way he has introduced machines is fascinating because it appears that his art is more advanced already then a lot of technology that is in the world already. Stelarc is both progressing the art world and the science world so it is very fitting that we would learn about him in this class.

I do disagree with his stance on the outdated nature of the human body. I find this to be a really hash and wrong statement. While machines are more powerful and have a great potential they cannot replace a human. Scientist still know very little about what actually make our brain work to produce cognitive thought. Therefore we are still unable to produce artificial intelligence leaving human to the superior then robots. Machines and robots still need the human to be built and be kept in working order, so with out us they are nothing.

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Jacob Karp - Week 3 - Resenting order and defying bodily limitations

This week’s lectures revealed a very unconventional approach to scientific art/artistic science. The inclusion of robotics and “cyborg-like” technologies in art is one that undeniably branches art and science. The works of STELARC and Survival Research Lab are unlike anything I have ever been exposed to before. Survival Research Lab’s utilizes crude robotic machines and Tesla coils in their crude, violent, mechanized performances. These performances entrance the audience watching it with its explosions and synthetic lightning (tesla coils) in what is seemingly a state of mayhem. These huge industrial mechanical contraptions are the work of Mark Pauline.

Mark Pauline’s creation is aimed to create “resentment towards the forces of order”. The show includes robotic frightful beasts like tyrannosaurus and medusa moving to metal grinding industrial music and during some performances crickets are released into the crowds to induce more resentment as was the aim. I find it interesting that the entire aim of the performance is for the crowd to turn against industrial growth/modernization and technological advances that bring order and structure. I find this interesting because these artistic performances are employing science as an artistic medium but the idea being conveyed is against the very medium of innovation used.

http://www.streettech.com/bcp/BCPgraf/CyberCulture/SurvivalResearchLabs.html

Stelarc, I found equally interesting. His work is all based on “enhancing the body” by using technological extensions (like artificial limbs) and suspension by hooks that pierce into his skin on his back. He feels that the “body is obsolete” and we must move towards enhancing our beings through technology. His ultimate conception is that of cyborgism. He puts his body through intense pain to realize his physical and psychological limitations of his being/body and he then searches for technologies to enhance the body’s abilities. The skin is the divider that separates the soul from the world and by mutilating it through piercing and tearing, Stelarc feels he is dissolving this divider. Stelarc serves as his own subject of his performances. These performances aim to incite thoughts that the body is limited and by introducing technologies we can increase our potential and rid ourselves of limitations. I thought this was interesting because we do employ artificial internal body parts be stronger than we normally would be. Take defibrillator or prosthetics or replacement joints of steel, these things rid the individual of its limitations and don’t compromise our view of the individual as a person. So by integrating technology into our bodies we become stronger (as we become more and more a cyborg being) but we remain a person our soul unaffected and no longer blocked from the world by our skin and bodily limitations.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/stelarc/a29-extended_body.html

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Mayra Perez-Week3-Industrial Age, Kinetic Art, Robotics

In his book, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, Buckminster Fuller makes a call for the innovation in human technologies. He asserts that the specialization in education, and other fields, is inefficient. That is, specialization is not in the best interest of the whole of society. Moreover, Fuller states that the men that first created watercrafts were not specialized in watercraft building, that they were “extraordinarily effective” with the sword as well. In other words, these men had a great number of skills and talents.

After reading Fuller’s book, I googled the term “specialization” so as to further my knowledge on the subject and to truly evaluate Fuller’s argument. It was then that I began to contemplate the context of “specialization.” I came up with a long list of possible meanings to Fuller’s idea of “specialization.” Was this word pure applicable to education? The economy? Or the body? It was with the latter that Stelarc and his radical work came to mind. I began to consider his idea of the body as “obsolete.”

This idea of the “obsolete body” took me back to my previous anatomy and physiology courses; the extremely complex and specialized design of the human body. I always admired the human body and all of its independent yet interconnected systems. Sure, I always considered it flawed to some extent, but never obsolete.

After giving the abstract concept of an “obsolete body” some thought, I wanted to gain a thorough understanding of the implication of such a concept. Does the human body also suffer from inefficiency because of high specialization? Are the human body’s systems really interconnected? Is the human body really suited for its environment? I thought about these questions long and hard and I tried to conceptualize Stelarc’s idea.

I reflected on Stelarc’s argument that the body is obsolete because of it’s lack of modular design and recalled an article from an evolution course I took a few quarters ago about the human body and its incompatibility with its environment. If I remember correctly, the article asserted that our bodies were designed for hunter-gatherer lifestyles and because we had sedentary consumer lifestyles, we suffered from diseases such as diabetes, obesity, etc. In the words of Stelarc, the human body “is biologically ill-equipped to cope with its new extraterrestrial environment” and so the human body is “obsolete.”

As far-reaching as Stelarc’s ideas are, they absolutely convincing. Most importantly, they represent perhaps the biggest shift in paradigm in any of the two cultures.

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Allen Wang Section 2 - Robots, A Second Age of Technology?

Technology has always been second nature to man since about a centruy ago. Technology has really affected our live for the better and for worse. Robotics had made life more efficient and well as more pleasurable. Yet, we are always in doubt of whether robots ever develop their own subconscious mind or that the human race would grow more lazy because of its dependancy on the robots.

As robots has become to represent humans more and more, we can see how advanced technology has become. Soon, robots will respond not just to a remote control and some buttons, but they will become somewhat independent and would act on their "own will." Robots will still be a tool that humans woudl utilize, but as robots create their own wills, the wrodl woudl become a more dangerous place. Computers and other advanced technologies have always been known to degrade and glitch. Because of the unlimited amounts of possibilities of scenerios that can occur, we, humans, can never determine what woudl happen when technology becomes to advanced for humans to handle.

With the wide range of robotics avaliable now, our life is very dependent on technology. Heck, even this post and this blog would not have been created without the help of technology. Technology has shaped our lives so much that we cannot even imagine a life without technology. As such in this picture, we can see an almost primitive technology compared to the technology of a human robot. This technology would have been very advanced just a few years ago.

In addition to creating technology, humans have become deft at manipulating technology as well. Such manipulations can be seen during circuit bending. With this manipulation of sound, new innovative creations can be created. Circuit bending brings out the creativity of its creator and can turn a very dull piece of intrument or toy into a very complex and interesting tool that creates an assortment of sounds, none of which are exactly identical. With unlimited possibilities, humans woudl continue to discover ways to entertain ourselves with anything and everything.

Technology has created a sort of mystery in the lives of humans. With technolgy, everything is possible and we can look forward the future with the anticipation of the unknown. Never knowing what can be created, we can only rely on the imagination of the creative mind of humans to shape the future of humans.

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One of the most intriguing topics of last week’s lecture series was circuit bending as introduced by Sean Dockray. The idea is completely bizarre and its geek factor allows the practice to stand out and take shape among enthusiasts and onlookers alike.

Wikipedia defines circuit bending as, “a creative short-circuiting of low voltage, battery-powered electronic audio devices such as guitar effects, children's toys and small synthesizers to create new musical instruments and sound generators, emphasizing spontaneity and randomness.”

The idea of taking apart a working electronic device and forcing it to short circuit (effectively breaking it) is a noble pursuit and seems as if it would be more prevalent among engineers and scientists – not artists.

In this sense, circuit bending is a prime example of the closing bridge between the disciplines of science and artistry. Experimenters are literally using scientific methods to modify and produce new machines with the sole purpose of exploring artistic potentiality. By itself, the “instrument” has no intrinsic value – it is up to the experimenter, or artist, to change the way the machine functions.

This brings up my primary question, though: can circuit bending be considered art when the artist does not necessarily know what sounds he will be producing or if those sounds can be replicated or repeated again?

The best way that I can explore this question is through a more familiar analogy: if I decide to take a painting that a fellow artist recently completed and I arbitrarily paint over it and make slight modifications, but the changes I make are not permanent nor replicable, is what I did considered an art form? This leads to the discussion of kinetic art.

Kinetic art contains moving parts and is usually moved by motors, wind or human interaction. To some extent, this is exactly what circuit bending is – a way of modifying someone else’s art temporarily in a way that is irreparable and irretrievable.

circuit bending: a beginner’s guide

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Kiesha Nazarenus- Week 3- Ken Feingold

This week one particular artist caught my eye above all the others. As our professor flashed through websites she stopped at one that struck me as interestingly unusual. Various pieces all containing heads…just heads…both realistic looking and dummy looking. Well the artist is Ken Feingold and after reading through his works I fell in love with what he is doing in regards to art and technology. The pieces he did that I particularly enjoyed had to do with heads that engaged in dialogue either with themselves or with the audience. None of the dialogue is pre-recorded rather it is created through computer programming that develops individual personalities for each of the “characters”. The amount of technology put into the pieces is pretty cool but the artistic meaning behind each piece makes it completely interesting. In the piece If/Then there are two identical heads that speak to each other while doubting their own existence. The conversation focuses on existence and whether or not they are the same person and whether or not they will really ever know.
Is this life?
Imagine being me.
Do you see things clearly?
How do you feel?
Sometimes I feel very confused.
Can I control my feelings?
I feel like I exist.
I feel like I am inside my head.
What does it feel like to be inside your head?
Inside my mind I can sense that there is an I that is something that’s not the one who is sensing.
Why?
Why do you look just like me?
No, I don’t look just like you - I am accidental.
Sinking Feeling is another single head who is convinced of its own existence, but desperate to know "Why don’t I have a body like everyone else?" or "How did I get here, what am I doing here?"
Another piece with two heads is similar in that the heads look identical and question whether or not they are the same person since they look alike, blink at the same time and sound alike. This piece, What If?, has one figure speaking into the other’s ear which brings about questions: Is one putting thoughts into the other’s head? Or is the other one hearing voices? Are they really the same person? They worry endlessly about what they don’t know, can’t remember, or don’t want to think about and they tend to repeat themselves.
-what if I’m imagining this?
-what if you are dreaming?
-why does this keep going on?
-what do you want me to tell you?
-how can you describe this?
-what if this is a big joke?
-what if we are just pawns in our own game?
-it is not easy to understand this.
-what if we were analytical?
-what if this is all there is?
-what if i catch on fire?
-what if you catch on fire?
In a more political piece, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, three floating heads discuss several basic questions regarding humans and nature
M: All of the small particles work together – there are more of us than anything
A; Are we the only ones who think about the future?
M: We don’t think about mind.
A: Hah hah hah, what a laugh!
V: Do animals love vegetables?
A: We are the ones who can reflect on things and make them change.
M: Can reflect on kings and make them change? Don’t ask me!
V: When one thing kills another so that it can survive, isn’t that violence?
You is a piece with two identical heads laying next to each other…but one is male and the other female. They argue with each other about their relationship, then make up, then regret their argument, and begin to argue again. Each time there dialogue is slightly different but generally in a similar way. The message sent to the audience is to see how phrases can have little real meaning, but a lot of power to do harm.
Feingold also has certain pieces that interact with the audience. Box of Men explores the idea that those who decide the guilt or innocence of others may be acting in frighteningly arbitrary and seemingly random ways.
Jimmy Charlie Jimmy is a dummy head that is constantly talking to himself until someone comes up to him at which point he stops talking and if the viewer talks to him he starts repeating the words of the visitor until the visitor steps away.
I really enjoyed reading through Ken Feingold’s various projects. His way of portraying his ideas is unique but entirely effective.

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Christine Dang - Week 3 - Robotics, Detachment, and Art

Even in the earliest incarnation of robotics in the machines of the Industrial Revolution, they have always been associated with an intense sense of detachment. With the advent of interchangeable parts and the assembly line, workers no longer had any connection to the final product. All they knew was their specific part and the mindless, mechanical task that was assigned to them. This detachment continues on to all forms of machines, robotics, and in fact nearly all aspects of technology. Even that to which this detachment does not apply continues to be viewed as such. For example computers can now be used for many kinds of communication, and yet there still remains this cultural connotation of computers with isolation.




Furthermore, robotics and machinery are closely tied to engineering, a largely math-based field which is generally considered as coldly logical a profession as can be.

This then leads to an interesting contradiction that lies within the concept of robotic art. Robotics and machines are considered to be these cold, impersonal, and emotionless objects. Art, on the other hand, relies greatly upon the ability of a piece to form a personal connection with its audience. Thus, robotic art manages to somehow connect with its viewers on an emotional level because of its emotionless nature.


The reaction to robotic art is generally one of disturbance and unease. Commonly, the more human-like these creations are, the "creepier" they are perceived to be. This emtoional response is enhanced if the robots additionally perform or art in some human fashion. This organic nature of something that is decidedly inorganic triggers a great reaction in a fair number of people. In this way, intruigingly enough, that which is emotionless can generate emotion

However, at the same time, robotics in art can also enhance the level of human interaction with art. In fact, even the earliest examples of interactive art relied on machines, such as the old coin-operated strength tests and other such machines often seen in carnival games.



In modern times, robotics and artificial intelligence offer such a vast possibility in interactivity. For example, these Robot Actors created by Carl Pisaturo can not only run off a pre-written program or be controlled by an operator, but they can also interact with their environment as well as with one another, Furthermore, through these interactions, the robots can actually expand their vocabulary and knowledge by learning from their environment.



Then there is also the other aspect of things, that of art of robotics. As discussed in the article "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin, mechanical reproduction of art has been long since in development. However, some artists have taken this a step beyond the norm of simple reproduction and onto actual works of art created by robots. In Monday's lecture, AARON was presented. This robot, programmed by Harold Cohen, does not merely replicate already existing pieces of art, that can be done well enough with the use of a high quality scanner and printer. Instead, AARON's artificial intelligence allows it to creatively devise and paint its own pieces of art. However, this then brings up a very important question: Is the robot actually capable of artistic thought and ability, or is it merely the medium through which Harold Cohen creates his pieces? At this point and level, who is the actual artist? As the technology advances, this line will in all likeliness simply become increasingly more blurred.

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Julie Fair- Week 3- Robotics in Art

The pieces presented this week really opened up a new art genre to me. Prior to this week's lecture I had known very little about the field of robotics as an art form and had had absolutely no idea that this field had developed as far as it has. The one main idea that I took away from this weeks presentations, was how diverse the field of robotics has become. Sure, all the pieces we saw this week can fall under the robotics category, but they all achieve such different things with their use of robotics. Two drastically different uses are Leonel Mora's work, where he designs robots to produce paintings, and the work of the Survival Research Lab, which uses robotics to create a large scale show where the machines are performing. Each uses machines, but to achieve very different final products.




I found it very interesting to see the directions artists are taking with technology. Many are going in suprising ways as with the painting robot. Mora is not only using technology as a tool to aid in his painting, but is actually making it possible for the robot to create the art completely on its own. This is interesting because it appears that for Mora, the creative aspect lies not in the painting but in the creation of the robot. This is a very different focus than that of most traditional art forms. I find this interesting because I feel that it forces me to re-think my definition of "art." And basically it has just made realize exactly how difficult art is to define.
What I have come up with is that the concept of art differs apon one's position. For someone viewing art, the focus is on the aesthetics of the piece and the type of resonse a piece warrants. For the artist, the focus is on the construction of a piece which has significance to the artist.


I think in the case of robotic art, the pieces can much more be seen as art from the creator's point of view. I personally do not find robots, such as the large constructions of Chico MacMurtrie, very aesthetically pleasing, as many viewers might not. However, the artist creates a piece because he or she enjoys it and sees it as significant in some way. I respect this aspect of robotics and find it interesting to see what amazing things these artists are capable of doing with technology.

I thought it was interesting that when talking about one of the artists, it was noted that the government wanted him to come and work for them but the artist refused to. I find it interesting that although some of these artists have the means to make huge profits through the use of their technological knowledge, they have chosen to use their skill for creating art pieces. As I look at some of these pieces I see potential in the machines to do so much. They could be used in medicine to help people or in other industries to make money and I just find it very interesting that these few individuals have chosen to use their skill artistically.



This week, I also really enjoyed the guest speakers I heard present. First there was the Mandelbrot lecture. I went into that lecture really not knowing what to expect, but basically with low expectations, since math does not interest me all that much. But I ended up really liking the presentation. I thought it was very interesting how comfortable Mandelbrot was in speaking about both math and art. I liked that he approached the topic of fractals from both positions and how he included other artists in his examination of fractals from the artistic stance. He pointed out fractals in pieces I would never have noticed before, such as in the clouds and waves of Hokusai's pieces. Visit this site to see his wave painting: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/ukiyoe/fujibig.gif


I also really enjoyed Sean Dockray's presentation, and although he didn't think he was talking much about robotics, I thought his presentation was very relevent to this weeks theme. His work with circuit bending demonstrated a new artistic area where robotics can play a part: music. Certainly circuit bending uses robotics of a sort and it can easily be seen as an art form. It is interesting to see the range of sounds that are withheld from the audience during the normal use of a device. I also thought his idea of certain aspects of humanity as being robot-like was very interesting. Like how he was taking about the way a society functions as being sort of robotic. In a sense, society is similar to a machine. Individuals can effect it, in a sense giving it the parameters by which it will function, but then it takes those parameters and creates something unpredictable, similar to some of the machines we have been examining, such as the work of Joshua Davis: http://www.joshuadavis.com/. I just thought it was an interesting way of looking at society that I would otherwise, never have thought of.

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Nolan Bennett - Week 3 - Inefficiency to breed success

The study of robotics has to be one of the oldest fantasy-driven veins of scientific research, by which fans of 2001: A Space Odyssey or Star Wars have always been enticed by the prospect of an android of sentient mechanical being. This fact alone is incredibly pertinent to the crossbreeding of science in art in that it demonstrates a field in which intentions and innovation make or break the connection.

A good example of such a phenomenon is the work of Stelarc, in which the man proclaims “the body is obsolete.” Depending on the context by which one perceives Stelarc’s work, two different conclusions can be drawn. Were Stelarc intent on his performances being nothing more than the aspiration for science with absolutely no message or commentary on society, it can be surmised that his experiments would be treated as shoddy quackery by the scientific community. Although he has undoubtedly made progress with his bionic arms, faux stomachs and curious multipedal vehicles, it is a grander question still to ask if he has contributed more to science than he has to social awareness of the science and the nature of his queries. Viewing his work in the context of performance art one might suggest he is brilliant, challenging onlookers to consider the importance of appendages and those extensions we use in daily life through his demonstrations and performances.

From this it seems that if an artist-scientist like Stelarc has two goals (one being to push an idea, another being to progress a science) that he will not necessarily succeed at the latter if intent on the former. Looking at other robotic aspirations such as Honda’s Asimo or the Einstein robot, which are considered more in the vein of pure science, it is easy to see how shifting the perspective changes what is expected of the artist-scientist. The beauty of art is that expectations are few, other than those held by fellow artists. In science not only do other scientists expect progress but the public does as well. This is not to say that Asimo is not artistic nor that it does not suggest something about the human form and scientific progress, however its intention as a work of science alone means the creators must uphold the highest levels of quality to maintain integrity as progressive science.

The Survival Research Labs are an excellent complement to this notion of expectations within a context – for someone viewing their performances with the mindset of pure science, how does a buzz-bomb engine or a shoddy 2x4 chucker move science forward? It may be that their inefficient caterpillar robot works poorly to suggest something of the science it emulates, but given a science perspective it is essentially a failure. Perhaps that failure is the message itself; however, in science failures do not continue to get funding and tend to suggest other avenues of experimentation required to arrive at success.

Within the process of scientific experimentation it is consistently important to respect the method of trial-and-error. Just as trying an experiment despite its failures may perpetuate some notion about how we interact in society, a success too can be considered in light of its suggestive contributions to society in lieu of those material. I only hope that the seemingly pervasive mechanical inefficiencies inherent to the artwork of SRL and Stelarc are indicative of more than just a message and that actually brilliant scientists would not perpetuate failure to successfully progress an ideal.

However, this leads us to question what good science entails…

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Jacob Karp - Week 3 - Resenting order and defying bodily limitations

This week’s lectures revealed a very unconventional approach to scientific art/artistic science. The inclusion of robotics and “cyborg-like” technologies in art is one that undeniably branches art and science. The works of STELARC and Survival Research Lab are unlike anything I have ever been exposed to before. Survival Research Lab’s utilizes crude robotic machines and Tesla coils in their crude, violent, mechanized performances. These performances entrance the audience watching it with its explosions and synthetic lightning (tesla coils) in what is seemingly a state of mayhem. These huge industrial mechanical contraptions are the work of Mark Pauline.

Mark Pauline’s creation is aimed to create “resentment towards the forces of order”. The show includes robotic frightful beasts like tyrannosaurus and medusa moving to metal grinding industrial music and during some performances crickets are released into the crowds to induce more resentment as was the aim. I find it interesting that the entire aim of the performance is for the crowd to turn against industrial growth/modernization and technological advances that bring order and structure. I find this interesting because these artistic performances are employing science as an artistic medium but the idea being conveyed is against the very medium of innovation used.

http://www.streettech.com/bcp/BCPgraf/CyberCulture/SurvivalResearchLabs.html

Stelarc, I found equally interesting. His work is all based on “enhancing the body” by using technological extensions (like artificial limbs) and suspension by hooks that pierce into his skin on his back. He feels that the “body is obsolete” and we must move towards enhancing our beings through technology. His ultimate conception is that of cyborgism. He puts his body through intense pain to realize his physical and psychological limitations of his being/body and he then searches for technologies to enhance the body’s abilities. The skin is the divider that separates the soul from the world and by mutilating it through piercing and tearing, Stelarc feels he is dissolving this divider. Stelarc serves as his own subject of his performances. These performances aim to incite thoughts that the body is limited and by introducing technologies we can increase our potential and rid ourselves of limitations. I thought this was interesting because we do employ artificial internal body parts be stronger than we normally would be. Take defibrillator or prosthetics or replacement joints of steel, these things rid the individual of its limitations and don’t compromise our view of the individual as a person. So by integrating technology into our bodies we become stronger (as we become more and more a cyborg being) but we remain a person our soul unaffected and no longer blocked from the world by our skin and bodily limitations.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/stelarc/a29-extended_body.html

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Duy Phung - Week 3 - Robotics and Art

This week we have witnessed many great things. First it was the excellent lecture "The Nature of Roughness in Mathematics, Science and Art" by "the father of fractals" Benoit Mandelbrot. Second the evolution of robotics and art has developed and advanced during Industrilization discussed by Prof. Vesna. Third Prof. Sean Dockray lectured on robotics and art from his experience and perspective.
In the beginning of his lecture, Prof. Mandelbrot pointed out the nature of the rough and the smooth. While most things we've encountered in real life are rough, the smooth is very rare and most of it exists in mathematics. I was surprised to know that some fractals do exist in nature (the Cauliflower), in architecture (the Eiffel tower or an African village), and in painting (“the Wave” by Katsushika Hokusai). The latter part of his lecture focused on the discovery of fractals, which were involved with a lot of mathematical equations. I’ve got to admit that I didn’t understand about the Brownian loop and cluster and how he came up with the idea of fractals derived from it. However, it was quite good to see one of the greatest mathematicians in person and hear him talk.
In class lecture, Prof. Vesna discussed about the history of industrialization, mostly in America and how the development of robotics has shaped contemporary art. My favorite parts were the Australian-based performance artist Stelarc and the Survival Research Labs (SRL). Stelarc deals with mind-body problem and tries to push the human limit to the extreme. Moreover, he builds machines that enhance human physical ability. Personally I don’t like his work. They don’t look interesting, and I don’t see their practical application. The image of his whole body hanging in the air with the hooks actually piercing through his skin gave me an irritable feeling. SRLs were a different story. Watching their festival show in video was an enjoyable experience. There were all kinds of weird war machines, each with different design, movement, sound, and of course… gunfire power. The atmosphere was terrific and everybody at the show all got excited. I couldn’t help thinking about war video games I had played when I watched it. I called this SRL “art” because their distinguished designs existed not only in paper or computer but in real world, where hard-working designers have successfully drawn the audience together and completely got them through their work. Human-human interaction and human-robotics interaction make the difference.
The interaction between robotics and society was also the topic in Prof. Sean Dockray’s lecture. Unlike other guest lecturers we’ve met so far, Prof. Dockray discussed many interesting topics which many of them were not involved in robotics at all. His experiment on the movement of ants was an example of social interaction. I loved watching these ants moving around and the way the Sean presented his idea on ants’ antenna. From there, he moved on to show us the movement of cash and his $150 experiment. Although the experiment was unscientific, it was a good way to test human thoughts in modern society and human-human interplay. I’m pretty sure we could anticipate the outcome: lottery, throwing money away, buying drinks, and happy ending for all participants. It seemed that society has shaped our thinking and acting behaviors and we in turn have exerted our influence to each other and society.
I was fascinated to figure out that we don’t have freedom at all when we’re driving a car. I always had thought when I got a car; I could go any place I wanted and was pretty much free. I was wrong because as the Prof. Dockray pointed out, we were controlled by traffic light. This is the most obvious example of how robots controlling human beings.

I choose the Soccer Robots to present the idea of how people use robotics to entertain ourselves without any commercial momentum.
I was lucky to be at the RoboCup in 2003, and it was actually entertaining to watch the Soccer Robots playing against each other team. Although the speed was very slow because the Soccer Robots had to sense the ball position and executed their actions on their own, seeing cube-like players on wheels competing lying-dog-like players for the balls was a freshening experience. Colorful and funny players, designers’ reactions, and spectators’ uproar when there was a goal all contributed and gave me a memorial night. To me that was robotics and art all about.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/06/0617_020617_TVrobots.html

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Sara Saadeh, Week 3: Recording History through Photography

This week we studied many different forms of art that incorporate or are greatly influenced by mechanical reproduction. My most favorite form of art has always been photography because of the many ways in which one can minipulate an image to create a wide range of different versions. Just as two people looking at the same scene can interpret it in completely opposite manners, photography allows its creator to sculpt a piece of art from often times a very simple moment captured on film. In some cases they can even tell a story.
One specific artist that did just that was a man named Eugene Atget, who was mentioned in the Walter Benjamin's article, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", for having recorded the history of Paris, France around the 1900's through photography. There is a remarkable truth in the age old saying that "a picture is worth a thousand words" because we can read all about France's history in a textbook, but the reality that is portrayed in a photograph can feed our imagination that much more. It can bring us back to that time and it becomes more alive when we see the people living at that time and the condition of the city in all its rustic beauty. No amount of flowery rhetoric could provide as rich a visual as that of the life captured in a photograph.
Taking a closer look at Eugene's work, he is described as not being interested in the "art photography" movement but his work was a "complusion to preserve natural environments from the destruction already visible in the industrialized northern districts of the city, and, in the same way, images of working individuals may have been made to record distinctive trades before the changes in social and economic relationships already taking place swept them away"(Rosenblum, Niomi). So, he literally used photography as a means to record the history of this very historical city, but in such a way that one can literally look through his photographs and feel as if they are taking a tour of the city. The only perspective he used in these photos was that of a person on foot, which added to personal feel of the photos. He also used toner which brought out a lot of detail in his photos and created an old looking feel as well, which is what I get when looking at them. On one of the websites I researched, they compared his photos to that of the same buildings as they look at present day. It is quite remarkable to see the difference in the two as if you can see time pass by through the pictures.

It was very interesting to see that Eugene Atget disregarded most of the rules of photography to use it as a tool for a project he felt compelled to create. But, in this way he was able to create a whole new approach to photography that expanded this incredible form of art.

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/atget/atget.html#photographs

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Monica Tse - week 3 - What are the boundaries of art?

Considering the interaction of art and robotics made me think a lot about what “art” really is. If machines, programming, the growth of a garden via electronic technology, among others can be considered art, couldn’t anything be considered art?
The first things that come to my mind when I think of art are drawings, oil paintings, Greek sculptures, and architectural structures. I tend to link “art” with personal and direct interaction between the artist and the art he/she creates, something that the artist expends sweat and blood on in order to create the final masterpiece. For example, the marble statues of the Greek gods must have taken weeks of meticulous and painstaking labor to create, and it took at least a couple of years for the paintings created collaboratively by Reuben & Bruegel to be completed. You can see up close the rounded curves sculptors chose to form or the specific brush strokes painters chose to make. I feel like I am connected with the creator of the piece of art and have a glimpse into the artist’s personal perspective of what art means.

Therefore, when I read about robotic painting, such as the Robotic Action Painter, it was difficult for me to accept it as art. Still not being able to define what exactly “art” is, I saw the paintings created by these electronically programmed machines as straying far from the hand-created works of traditional artists. To me, this was much more impersonal and seemingly uncreative. I saw a piece of metal that was formed to obey particular algorithms that would allow it to draw precise circles and lines; to me, there was no sense of creativity. I guess there were two reasons why I did not view robotic paintings as art:

1) It is directly created by a machine rather than a human. So there is a disconnect between the art created and a living, feeling, unpredictable creator.

2) Because the robots are created via equations and commands, there is no creativity involved; the art created seems to be set in stone with no room for spontaneous alterations.

In my eyes, I saw the robotic process as lacking the ability to alter choices of what is drawn, which is linked to a disconnection from the human soul (something that is crucial to creating art) and the emotions and thought process that come with it. I think it is the direct human involvement that makes me see art as art.
However, the more I thought about the means by which the robot was created, the more I saw that there was human involvement. The artist is the one who is creating the robot which paints the paintings, so in essence, the human person is still the one creating the final piece. He or she chooses what abilities the robot has to create images and so the artist’s personal input is in fact a part of the mechanical piece of metal. I saw more how the robot was simply a middleman between creator and creation. I still don’t know how we can define “art”, and it is still difficult for me to see the art in robotics at first glance, but I better understand how the interfaces meet and mingle

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Juliet Lee - week 3 - Robotics & Art

Attended the lecture put on by IPAM for Benoit Mandelbrot’s The Nature of Roughness in Mathematics, Science and Art. I feel like a lot of what he said went over my head, but I enjoyed hearing him talk about the work he did on fractals and how he had found them before he knew what it was that he was looking at. It must be an incredible feeling to discover something, only to realize that it had been around you for a long while. Mandelbrot also talked about Brownian loops and clusters and islands. I did not understand what this was, but apparently the Brownian Island is created by a looping Brownian Motion function and it creates what looks like a realistic two dimensional island image. He referenced a few artists as well when he spoke of fractals, like Salvador Dali and Katsushika Hokusai. What I think he said was that Hokusai was had fractals in his work in the shadow of the clouds on Mount Fuji. Even though I am slow in connecting the math to the art, I appreciate how these mathematical equations create art. I can understand a function creating a pattern and if you add color it is basically the same as taking a pen to paper. What I do not understand is the work of those such as Stelarc. He declared that the body is obsolete and is now growing an ear on his face and has a third arm. Why is this considered art? He sounds like a scientist who has tendencies towards masochism. In my opinion, art should be able to be appreciated by others and not just the artist. Let’s say that a traditional artist who painted pictures dies and leaves all kinds of work behind in his studio. People could go in there later and see the completed works as well as those in progress and understand what was going on. But say Stelarc dies and someone went into his studio. What would the average person think about the things that he is doing to himself? Maybe the Department of Defense would have to be called in to investigate what was going on like in the case of Steve Kurtz, but more importantly, would anyone be able to appreciate what he did? If I walked into where Stelarc had worked, I would think that this person was mentally ill and probably thought that he could change the human body into a robot and killed himself because he did not understand the complexities of the science. Here I must stop and reflect a moment, because I am always writing how I do not understand something that is considered art. This class has been difficult for me in that I am not the creative type and I have a hard time thinking outside of the box. But it does not mean that I do not know where the artists are coming from. I say that I don’t understand Stelarc and yet I do see the artistic value he could have to some people. I think I have to be more patient with myself and with the artists that we look at in class.

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Michelle Baba, Week 3 - Our Third Industrial Revolution

Learning about robotics and biorobotics reminded me a lot of all of the movies that I have seen. Just off of the top of my head:

Data from Star Trek
Johnny 5 from Short Circuit
Terminator
R2-D2 & C-3PO from Star Wars
RoboCop
Inspector Gadget
I, Robot
Bicentennial Man
A.I. Artificial Intelligence

For an even crazier list of movies (since 1980) visit:
http://turtlemeat.com/robot/list-of-robot-movies/4/

… the list could go on forever and the robots vary from those created to help humans perform calculations and various tasks (as in R2-D2 & C-3PO from Star Wars) to human beings that have undergone some sort of severe trauma/body damage and require some reconstruction with mechanical part (ie. RoboCop, Inspector Gadget, and Will Smith in I, Robot). In the case of healthcare, is there a certain point at which we must draw the line, when people are becoming too artificial? Are we going to find a way to prevent the break-down of the human body? I ask this because, at the rate that we are going, with all of the technological advancements and scientific breakthroughs, it seems that we are seeking immortality.
Today, we may not see robots on every corner as often portrayed in many futuristic movies, however, robots have been around for quite some time (after all, the word was coined in 1920). We currently use them to explore outer space, aid doctors while performing surgery, and have invented ways to make them wearable – thus “improving” our very own bodies. As seen below, even prosthetic legs, have been consistently improving throughout the years.




One of the current trends in design are exoskeletons to makes us faster, stronger, etc…


And the latest creations, which, quite frankly scares me (since it is available to the public) is the Land Walker. It’s gigantic, and it has a machine gun attached to its side…





for more information, visit:
http://www.gizmag.com/go/4004/


or to watch it in action on youtube: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/robots/wearable-robot-suit-complete-with-side-mounted-gun-for-sale-191651.php
I know it’s a little forward thinking, but what if one day we are virtually indestructible? (I’m sure there must be at least one movie about something like that…) Who knows, maybe one day in the future (when people have robots to do work for them and everything is automatic) this era of robotic-design will later be referred to as the Third Industrial Revolution…

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Annie Wu- Week 3

It is definitely really interesting to see how art has transitioned from being traditional and realistic to being industrialized and robotic. This great shift reflects the changes in cultural values, as well as, the constant motion of art. The Industrial Revolutions really spurred these changes in art, as there were the assembly lines and new technologies. It’s funny how things that we would have considered earlier simply to be purely functional or mechanical can now also be categorized as artistic.


Kinetic art is a great example of this transition of artistic values. Sculptures had traditionally been used to glorify the human body, or public figures. They were usually carved from marble or cast from bronze; basically, sculptures were made from heavy and durable mediums so that their monumental size and significance would stand out to the viewer. However, this is not the case for kinetic art. In kinetic art, the sculptures have moving parts, and are composed of different materials. They are machine-like, and their motion is provided either through natural forces or mechanical means.

Marcel Duchamp’s “Bicycle Wheel” was the first kinetic sculpture. His sculpture is also a readymade, meaning that the parts of his sculpture were already made and available to him—all he really did was stick things that were already created together. “Bicycle Wheel” is just a bicycle wheel attached to a stool. Both these items are so common and were probably made from assembly lines in factories. This leads me to question then, “What is art?” If Duchamp is able to create “art” with such everyday, manufactured objects, then is there really such a thing as a standard for art? Couldn’t everything be considered as art then?

It’s also interesting to me how robotics is considered to be an art form now. New technologies are constantly being more and more developed, and even though something such as robotics may not seem to be inherently artistic, it really is, because it forces people to look at the world in different ways. To me, “Robotic Chair” is a really cool example of how robotics and art can go hand in hand. This chair randomly collapses, and after it falls apart, it manages to autonomously pull itself back together. It is a robot because of its ability to self-assemble and it’s computer “brain.” Simultaneously, it is an art piece because of what it demonstrates and represents.
Robotic Chair

While I do think that robotics and industrialization have without a doubt helped art to achieve new levels of creativity and expression, I’m not so sure that these new technologies have only affected art in a beneficial way. From robotic and artistic creations such as the “Telegarden,” it seems as though these new technologies can make society more impersonal. Rather than interacting directly with the garden itself, people are communicating through the Web. Even though they gain this new technology and method of communication, they are still losing the personal aspect of this activity. They don’t get to enjoy directly working with nature and have instead become more caught up with technology.

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Kevin Yackle - Week 3 - why we need art to need robots

After listening to the talks and lectures this week about the integration of robots and art, I thought that using robots in art could allow artists to do things that are truly unique. The reason I thought so was because of the diversity of robots in our culture. Robots can mean so many different things:

1) in one sense robots are the epitome of the advancement of our society. Showing how we have progressed. I think a good example of this is how in movies the scenes of the future are always filled with robots. It seems that in our society, we judge societal progression now based upon how advanced our robotics is getting.

2) Robots could also represent the laziness of our culture and our cultures movement to mass production. Robots are necessary for businesses and factories in order to mass produce consumer products. In this sense, robots have replaced humans as workers and I think that robots represent how our cultures has adapted and changed, allowing robots to do jobs that people would not necessarily want to do. I can see how this could be both good and bad.

3) I also think of robots as representing destruction. Robots have been in TV shows where they battle in gladiator style arenas to the “death”. Robots are also used in combat now. It is interesting to think that a war now constitutes people pushing buttons to shoot missiles and flying drone airplanes.

In these three senses I think it reveals how closely robots have become integrated within our society and in some senses represent how advanced our culture is. However, what they mean exactly changes depending upon their context. They can represent advancement and death; it just depends on when and where they are being used. Because of the ambiguity of their relationship with society, I think that they are perfect thing for artists to explore in order to perhaps more thoroughly investigate this relationship.

Stelarc is a good example of an artist who is investigating this relationship. He does the bodily transformations with robots and has even gone as far as to say that the human body is not necessary. I think that this is definitely an extreme considering that artificial intelligence is such a controversial subject, but HUMAN intelligence is definitely no controversy. But I think that Stelarc is a good example of an artist who is using robots in order to explore their potential and explore their relationship with humans.

Another good example is the survival research labs. Their giant shows which are very violent show the potential of robots to create massive amounts of destruction. It is interesting because they are building these enormous and advanced robots and then just using them to destroy each other. SRL is basically exploring how robots are considered an image of how advanced our society is, but then they are also exploring how these advancements can be used to create our own demise.

When I was searching online for interesting things about robots, I came across this interesting website that is very satirical. I really got a kick out of it and I thought that it was a perfect example to back up my arguments here. The website is: http://www.iamlost.com/features/robotporn/ This website is a fake porn site that instead of men and women depicts robots. It just seemed so funny to me because as a society we envision robots as the image of our advancement and because of this we are constantly associating and integrating robots in our society. This website reminded me of the show the Jetsons where they have robots as maids. Perhaps they even had robots as sexual objects? It seems so ridiculous, but that is why I think it is so perfect. To us today it seems ridiculous, but who knows, in the future perhaps robots will become such a strong part of our society that website like this will no longer be jokes.

I think that robots are a good art technique for artists to explore because there is such an ambiguous relationship between robots in our society. All that can be definite is that robots are an integral part of our society and that we envision them to become more and more important in the future. The relationship with society is constantly evolving and our society needs artists to explore robots in order to help reveal what we need to be excited for and to fear.

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Boris Lipkin - Week 3 Robotics and Art

For this week's blog I would like to address three different topics: one brought up by the reading, one brought up by Victoria, and one by Sean Dockrey. It seemed to me like the four sources that we had this week gave a comprehensive view of the industrialization of art but each focused on completely different ideas and topics.
From the reading entitled The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin certain sections on the authenticity of photography and film really interested me. On page seven, the article states: “From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the ‘authentic’ print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice—politics.” I really disagree with this analysis of photography. While today even a negative is hard to find, the importance of authenticity for photography, and art, is still very vital. In an age where magnificent works of art can be drawn on a computer and a photograph can be edited to increase contrast, change the cloudiness of the sky, or change dozens of other things, the definition of authentic photography has shifted to mean “without or with minimal computer touch ups.” With this new definition, finding the moment and taking an authentic picture of it under the correct settings has remained something that takes skill, patience, and sometimes a bit of luck just like many of the older art forms.
At least to me, film and photography are the only art forms to have been created since the industrial age that can be classified along the lines of the artforms created before that. The advancement of photography and film has made it possible for everyone to create great works of art even if they are not artists by trade. However, the other forms of art that Victoria brought up in class did not really qualify as that for me. In his article, Benjamin sometimes used beauty interchangeably with art and I tend to mostly agree with that definition. The magic that art creates is through its beauty and awe of its viewer. That’s why I, personally, don’t consider the Survival Research Laboratory or most of the other works that Victoria brought up in class as art. Until robots can draw like Sonny does, in I, Robot I really can’t see their products as art.
Moving on to Sean Dockrey’s lecture, I would first like to say that I found a lot of his projects very interesting and creative. His art, just like Steve Kurtz’ and Victoria’s is definitely a product of the late 20th and early 21st century as the mediums through which he makes art were simply not available even 50 years ago. Looking back at Sean’s, Steve’s and Victoria’s work what stands out to me in it is that all of it is based on interaction with the viewer or more often the participant. While the forms of art that we are used to are the artists interacting with you by showing you an image, a sculpture, a video, artists in the 21st century are creating art that depends fully on its participants in order to be art. Thus a lot of the art that’s being brought up in this class is more of a social analysis making the human mind its medium instead of a canvas or a roll of film.

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Cui H. Cao--Week 3--Robot?

"They're crazy... the fire, the noise, and the fight...what is the sense of building these robots and making them fight with each other?"

I was confused.

However, right after my words dropped on the ground, I realize that my critics were offensive.

What is Art?

There is no definition, but ways of understanding.

Struggling... for knowledge.

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Kelley Lonergan - Week Three

During third week, I was more interested in what was talked about in section rather than in lecture. It seems that what we talk about in lecture always brings up the question of “What is art?”
So, what is it?
Whatever her purpose was, the statuette Venus of Willendorf has been dated back to over 22,000 BCE, over a thousand times older than our current ages. If “art” has been around so long, and we still have yet to decide on a clean-cut definition, perhaps we should start believing that art really is indefinable.

As we sit and try to place labels, artists of today are literally stretching the indefinability of art to infinite lengths. During section, a few kids in the class complained that Casey Reas’ work was not truly “art.” A computer cannot be used for art. A simple screensaver cannot be praised. Beauty has to at least come from some amount of effort.
If we could travel back in time to about one hundred years ago, I bet we could find a similar argument used against some of the very first daguerreotypes. A photograph could not really be art, it was a form of cheating, a painting without skill. I am sure some people of today would still agree with that statement. Followers of Cartier-Bresson or Mapplethorpe would probably say otherwise.

In section, we looked at Sol Lewitt’s “Sentences on Conceptual Art.” We elaborated on one sentence that really struck a cord: Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution. I have agreed with this statement for many years, but only now have our paths collided. A friend and I always argued about our tastes in art: she liked strictly classical art, but I did not mind a little bit of modern. She could not bear to look at a Rothko, and could not comprehend what I saw in Magritte, but yet we still shared a favorite time period, the Baroque. She preferred a painting of a tree that perfectly resembled its subject to a mediocre rendition that perhaps used a new technique, or made a statement. Who is to say What Is Art? To be honest, I find the Mona Lisa kind of boring, but that does not mean I will try to criticize the world’s most famous painting.

I am interested to see what people’s reactions are to Sean Dockray’s lecture. I found his presentation fascinating. Some might argue that Sean’s degree in engineering from Princeton has become a waste based on his current profession, but how could that judge that? I am sure people will criticize his work, stating that is not art, just playing with toys. But how can one judge against how clever his pieces were? I may be somewhat biased, again, because I knew someone in his Pack-Man video, but Dockray’s work is undeniably interesting and engaging. We need to open our horizons to what could be the future of art.
Explosions thrill me as much as ancient Greek black-figured vessels, but I cannot complain. Art is art is art. Sometimes comprehension does not always denote skill and beauty. And vice versa.

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jose fernandez, week 3, robotics

This week’s topic on robotics and industrialization impacted the world was by far the most interesting yet. It was interesting to think that robots are considered pieces of art. I never would have believed that art would consist of machines doing things men programs them to do. One aspect of robotics I can designate as art is the process that is involved in creating a robot. Beginning with the artwork design of the model, an artist must become innovative and curious about his artificial human machine. Then the in between process of bringing the robot into form and life becomes the task of an engineer whom can be called an artist in his own right. Just like a painting takes time and patience, a robot requires the same effort. Artists are out to provoke the public eye and robots do this well. They give a look into the imaginary world which can only be seen through science fiction movies, cartoons, and books. They make the audience feel as if they are in another world far apart from their own. I have never been around personally to witness a show put on by robots like the people at survival research lab but from what I have seen in the videos and pictures of the machines I was amazed by the marksmanship and precision that went into them. The shows are amazing and fairly violent. My take on the reason as to why do such a violent show is to demonstrate how humans are becoming killing machines through warfare and destruction of our own humanity and off all other species in this planet.
It is amazing how far industrial technology has come. Robots would not have been possible if not for the first industrial revolution and the progress it has made since. The intro of electricity and the innovative assembly line gave way to what is used now to make robots. These industrial sectors are required for the creation of robots. With out electricity they would not be able to move. There has to be a process for building these robots, just like a car. There is a designated engineer for each of the parts required for the robot. The computer was also a key component. The computer is responsible for giving the robots a “brain” that can store every movement that the controller gives it. The controller thus controls the robot through electrical signals.
A look into the future world of robotics can give people chills. It may be possible that within this millennium the world is going to be operated by robots instead of humans. The creation of highly intelligent robots, like “Aaron-robot painter”, may displace humans and will soon create a mechanical world where many robots can be programmed to do even the most difficult tasks, even those out of reach for humans today. Soon enough robots will be take control of the world and humans will not be able to control them anymore. This looks like the story line of many science fiction books and movies. The dreams of these visionaries might just become a reality.

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Anna Marks - Blog 3

I thought this week’s topic was very interesting and thought provoking. I’ve never considered robotic creations as art but after viewing the presentations from this week I look at robots differently now. I think the Survival Research Lab is a very interesting group of guys that have taken their creative minds and created a new form of art that provokes people’s thoughts and reactions differently than other types of art.In discussion we talked about the meaning of art and what we thought the definition of art was. I agree with the statement that art is the outcome of any creative process but I also think that there are some limitations to art. I think that anything can be art; a photograph of a shoe or a box placed on a table in front of a red painting. However, I think that the quality and interpretation of the art depends entirely on the viewer. Art has a different meaning and provokes different feelings for each person that looks at it and they can interpret it however they want. The audience can agree with the piece or performance or they can disagree, but I think that anything can be art and people shouldn’t discourage and disagree with the fact that it is art. My friend went to Italy last quarter to go to an art school and at a club one night a group was doing a performance and the show consisted of dancing naked for 20 minutes, then having the main dancer perform a enema on themselves. When I first heard of this I was completely discussed and couldn’t even fathom how this was considered art, but my friend thought that it was an interesting way to express oneself and went into a lengthy description of the meaning and purpose of the show. This just shows how different people can appreciate different types of art.
When I first heard and saw the performances done by Survival Research Lab I was disturbed and surprised because I thought it was just a violent, destructive show and I didn’t really think about the meaning behind it. However, as I thought more about it I realized that the purpose was to expose people to the violence that is going on in the world today. The purpose was so surprise and disturb people, but the purpose of that was to shock people and make them realize that the world is not perfect and pleasant, but that there is a harsh and violent side to it. It took people out of their comfort and safety zones to get them to think and express themselves out of their usual ways.
I think a lot of people don’t consider these performances art and I would disagree with them completely. They creating masterpieces out of garbage and used materials in order to put on a show for the public to express their feelings and beliefs. I would say this is almost the definition of an art show, maybe not the traditional art show, but it definitely epitomizes the purpose of art performances.
I found some really interesting sights that promote a different side of Survival Research Lab and help to clarify the purpose of the shows.
http://www.streettech.com/bcp/BCPgraf/CyberCulture/SurvivalResearchLabs.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4609876

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Section 4 Week 3

I was kind of disappointed by the speakers this week and i hope no one takes offense to this. There is one reason why I didn't like Mr. Mandelbrot's and a few why I didn't like Sean's. I came into Mandelbrot's lecture with very high expectations. It was my impression that he would speak very elegantly about the artistic beauty of his set and while he did do that to a degree by showing appilcations of it and "fractal ideas" in artwork and what not, I thought it didn't have the levity or pep that I had expected from it. As for Sean, I felt he didn't put much effort into it. He had a long list of movies and so he didn't have to take up the time himself, and he didn't really talk about the topic at all; he just BSed a connection between our topic and his like a junior high schooler BSing literary analyses and their own. He spoke about his own works and then tied the beginning and end (kinda) to our topic. Circuit bending is interesting but not robotics. A political statement about how traffic lights make robots out of people is about robotics but not a connection between art and robotics. I know I'm being very critical so let me say this. I liked his art because he was very creative and had interesting ideas which is what his lecture was about. However, it just wasn't connected to our topic.
Okay, that being said, I think it's really hard to look at something and decide how much it is art and how much it is science. The reason I say this is because science in art is very much the same as science itself. Take Stelarc for example. While he makes explicit art pieces like "Blender" or "Stomach Sculpture" much of his art pieces represent the frontier of technology. For example, he has created several machines that read skin surface signals produced from nerves to both control and be controlled by technology. However, at the same time, in Japan, the same method has been developed to create a healthcare bodysuit that can double the wearer's strength. (see picture of HAL)
Several scientsts would like to create a prosthetic ear as Stelarc has envisioned but in many ideas, scientific and medical morality are bringing into question this project (as he wants a third ear). Finally, his "Prosthetic Head" project which can reasonably answer all things an "interrogator" says has another name in the scientific commnunity--artificial intelligence. As technology becomes a larger part of the art world, art seems to become a huge part of the science world; breakthroughs in one become synoymous with breakthroughs in the other. Given there were a lot of things that Fuller said in his article, I think one of the things that really struck me was when he used the analogy of horse inbreeding to explain why specialization is detrimental to our society. He said, "We can develop faster and faster running horses as specialists...but in doing so we breed out or sacrifice general adaptability." It occurs to me that this mixing of groups just forms a new group and so as the line is blurred between the art and technology world to bring about a new "technoart," we produce a new arena of specialization. Then we will wish to think outside the box so that we can look to other ideas so that we can be no longer specialists but well rounded people. We will say that people who specialize in technoart are as closed minded as the scientists and artists who refuse to intermingle today and so we will join two other areas of study and then continue doing so until we have an all encompassing subject of technosocioartisticscienligiosophiclinguilaw. Going back to Fuller's quote, we will be, even then, considered "unadaptable." Think of how much we miss out on by thinking there are only these specific groups that we can study. Science, art, religion, history, language, they are all as diverse as technosocioartisticscienligiosophiclinguilaw but we will continue to criticize our specialization in specific groupings and call ourselves closed minded or specialized and not well rounded or "adaptable." There is much to what Fuller says, though, as stereotypes are perpetuated as to who is what and as people play into these stereotypes by becoming introverted and uninteresting.
I suppose I should be ending this as I'm about to hit the word limit but from this lesson, I think I understand now that art is moving into all realms of science, helping to develop it rather than threaten it. I've always felt like there couldn't be an artist more versed in the nature of physics than me but now I realize we're all scientists. An artist's creativity helps us think outside of the box and imagine better worlds.

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James Zavala - Week 3 - Robots

This week’s talks were definitely not as interesting as last weeks were. The readings on the other hand were very interesting although it didn’t teach me specifically about art but other things about it. I liked the fact that there was a reading dedicated to stating that people will not grow without the mentality of stepping out of the box. It begins with a wonderful analogy of someone using the piano top as life raft and that although it might work for that situation it would not be wise to make all boats in the shape of a piano top. Its body led to the conclusion (at least the one that I picked up) that there will be no progression if those engineering the necessary objects do not work together and off of each others ideas. The process of creating should not have a pattern to be followed or have a set rule or limits; it should be a process of creativity and ingenuity.
The other article was very redundant. I felt that its point was something that is original and not made by the hundreds is beautiful, pure and authentic. The point of the story was very true; anything that is made by the big quantities looses its self and individuality. It no longer is a beautiful piece to appreciate being the fact that there are so many that they become repetitious and boring. As dumb as it may sound, my liking is very parallel to this thought although it is difficult to find things that are one of a kind nowadays. (But I digress) I completely agree that things that are made only once are more special but in today’s world with the needs and fast pace making something unique for every individual may not be the best method.
This leads to the talk about the Ford assembly line and how everyone becomes robotic in the process of creating. Although this may be true the creativity of utilizing math, statistics physics and the like to create such ingenuity is remarkable. I definitely would not say that the Ford assembly line is something that could be considered to be art. This could also be said about the printing press. In section it was mentioned that art is a very difficult thing to define but it could be seen that it is defined by its intention. If something is created for the purpose of entertainment it may be considered art oppose to something that it created for practical purposes. In that note many things are definitely art but others may still be ambiguous.
Concerning robotics, the things that were demonstrated may be considered art although they may not be aesthetically pleasing to me, they could be the most beautiful thing that the Joe sitting next to me has ever seen. The idea of cybernetics which stems from being the dictator to me seems a bit weird. It is not something that I understand or really care for, but nonetheless it does not mean that it can not be considered art. Chico Mac Murtrie is someone who created pieces which I appreciated because they are things that can be appreciated for just that they are. It was not looking at the process although the process does not have to be ignored but the final product can be appreciated for what it is. Cohens was very interesting; he created a robot that would paint for him. The pieces that the robot created were very pretty but to able to create the robot is what I would appreciate most from the whole ordeal.
I don’t like nor understand how Sterlac and the presenter from Wednesday could be considered an artist, but needless to say I am not stating that they are not. Only because I don’t understand it, does not mean that it is not art. The whole hanging yourself with hooks, growing an ear on your arm or making weird sounds from circuit bending is not really up my alley. Nonetheless, I will not neglect the fact that others may appreciate it for what it is and it may be the most beautiful piece of art that they have ever encountered. It goes back to old saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
I found a link where they bring up the topic of Sterlac. Here it is.

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Derek Ganong - Week 3 - Invariances, Time Travel, The Eiffel Tower, and Evolution.

I was one of the few attendees to the Mendelbrot lecture who was under the age of 50. While a lot of what he said went over my head, a good deal of it did sink in and started to mean something to me. When he started talking about the smooth and the rough (or irregular as he said it should be called) I was thinking to myself “so things are defined by what they are not, so what?”. As he progressed through this topic he repeatedly spoke about something called an “invariance”. As far as I could gather, an invariance is a function that remains unchanged under any transformation (ie: a fractal). He gave some examples of fractals and people who came before him that would have had to have some concept of scale invariance because of their work. Such examples were the formations of African villages, Salvado Dali paintings, Katsushika Hokusai paintings, and the Eiffel tower (in its initial conception). I particularly liked the brief section on perspective in the lecture. He presented the audience with a picture of what appeared to be a 1X1 foot (or so) plot of sand. The next slide put a person on the sand to show scale, and it was apparent that the size of the plot was on the order of several tens of feet across.
With respect to invariance, I tried to identify things that were both functions and that did not change with transformations off the top of my head. On of the first things that crossed my mind was the concept of time. I know that time does not change in its value, but I do know that intense gravitational pulls or speeds close to the that of light can alter times properties. So I searched for any information that had to do with both time and invariance and I came across the following website:

http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/VVC/theory/timereversal.html


According to this website, not only is time reversal mathematically possible but the collisions between particles is invariant. “This invariance is exact in strong and electromagnetic processes, but not in weak interactions. It is broken in the same processes that break the combined invariance symmetry” So I then came across another invariance and set about determining what it meant.

http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/VVC/theory/chargeconjugation.html

On this website I learned that “invariances, in particle physics, are relationships between different processes.” In simpler terms: the invariance here states that all particle processes are identical to those processes that are mirrors of the processes (all the particles are replaced with anti-particles (all charges are opposite)). In terms of time concept, this means that reverse time is possible with antiparticles undergoing the same reactions that regular particles undergo. The rest of the information regarding this was very high level physics and I did not spend the time required to figure it all out, but I plan to look back over it later because it particularly sparked my interest.

Another topic that go me going this week was the cybernetic and robotic artwork of Stellarc and his mantra that “the body is obsolete” From what I gathered from his website, Stellarc believes that the human body is impotent in its stagnant evolution and that cybernetic augmentations are needed to remain effective in the biological scheme. I happen to strongly disagree with Stellarc in this respect. I think that the human body is one of the most astonishingly tough and well adapted things that biology has produced. Our dexterity combined with our brains has led us to mount insurmountable odds and not just survive, but excel over all other creatures. Through my researching the feats and effectiveness of the human body I came across one astonishing instance here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1804668.stm

In this instance, a bipedal human has beaten a quadrupedal horse in an 80Km endurance race. I don’t know what more Stellarc would need to see to be convinced that the human body is capable of far more than it seems. I believe that the human brain is our most valuable asset. Mental toughness can overcome most physical limitations and allow a level of planning and autonomous action that a robot could never have today. In fact, the majority of military training involves building up a soldiers mental toughness. I don’t see why Stellarc would want a second ear or a third arm if it inhibited his dexterity or capacity with the ones he was born with. In regards to human evolution, Stellarc’s attempts at moving it along are a moot point because cybernetic implants are not heritable and, with modern medicine and health care, wont effect any kind of sexual or natural selection.
That being said, I admire Stellarc for his work with the practical side of cybernetics. One such project is his goggles that he is attempting to help blind people see with. This could very well be the next big thing in modern technology and medicine: full appendage or joint transplanting and an artificial means to help those who cannot see, hear, or speak regain those senses through robotic aid.
It just irks me when someone says something so presumptuous just to get a reaction out of an audience. (which he did!). Stellarc has a very noble cause both in the name of technology and human improvement. I think he should capitalize on that instead of on sparking emotions with one-liners.

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Zara Feeney- Week 3- Robotics and art of the future

In this lecture we learned about how many things influenced the want to use robotics in art including the industrial revolution, Henry Ford’s idea of the assembly line, as well as the second industrial revolution which included electronics.
Throughout the history of Modernism, art has made many dramatic impacts on society. One of the most emphatic movements of Modernism was the Constructivist and De Stijl movement. Constructivist and De Stijl effected politics and social life of the early 20th century in a similar way to contemporary art today.
Constructivism was an especially political art movement in Russia, as it was pre-revolutionary and contributed to inciting political up rise among the proletariat. De Stijl in the Netherlands was political in the way that it expressed a desire for political and social change to achieve a more utopian order in society. Varvara Stepanova’s constructivist costume design is in my opinion the most intriguing example of avant-garde’s desire to bridge the gap between art and life. His rigid costume design was intended to make a uniform society whose ideals were all the same. Stepanova insisted that once art and life could become connected, this utopian ideal could be achieved. If Varvara’s theory was correct, this teaches us now that our society has come no closer to utopia than society of Varvara’s time. Constructivism remains as an example to current society of art’s power to invoke political and social change. In many ways, art today still serves the same purposes.
The Bauhaus group also wanted to reunite creativity with the industrial world by training mainly in industry and handicraft as opposed to drawing and painting, which the academy preferred. This group wanted to unify many different types of art. In his essay, “The Theory Organization of the Bauhaus movement,” Walter Gropius claims that“ the ultimate, if distant goal of the Bauhaus is the collective work of art—in which no barriers exist between the structural and the decorative arts” (311). An artist must know how to stray from traditional techniques and realize a groups potential by gaining new forms of expression. He, as well as others in the Bauhaus movement, believed in the power of a collective effort. He believes that “Only an apparent unity can be achieved if many helpers carry out the design of a single person” (313).
According to the Bauhauists, collaborative work is the most effective when a group agrees on the same ideas of expression. Everyone involved must understand the same principal theme intended for the piece. The group must work harmoniously so the collective effort can become stronger and can have more of an impact than an individuals work. Gropius feels that this group force or spirit “creates for itself a new life other than the life of nature”(313).
Also integrating art and life, Rivera, who led the mural movement in the 1920s and 30s, used mural art as a public, idealogic and didactic propaganda for the proletariat. In his mural Detroit Industry (1932-33), it is clear that Rivera is attempting to analyze mass product assembly, make a statement about the working class ( the worker and the work should be united, and not in an assembly line), give a public message about technology either being good or bad, and use past and present cosmology. This mural is divided horizontally into three sections, the top one medium size, the middle one very narrow and the bottom one the largest. The top section has two simple human forms lounging symmetrically in the foreground, and has five hands ( of different skin tones and ethnities) protruding our of a rock like form. In the next panel, there are a few of earths basic elements that represent the connection between past and present cosmology. Lastly, in the lowest and largest section, Rivera paints a assembly line and a factory using a compilation of angular forms and an endless line of restless workers. In this chaotic mess, there is only one point where thhe viewer can depict a small red car in the distance. There is a separation of the work from the worker, because in an assembly line, a worker can only see what they are making, but do not know what the end product is.

This Website provides a lot of information that explains what artists today are making. http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2002/03/51058

In society today, art serves the purpose of answering the question “what if?” Contemporary artists present new ideas to push the limits to shock, amaze, and otherwise make an impression on society. In a sense, art does and always has attempted to be beyond society in the way it tests the boundaries of what is acceptable and will eventually grow to be accepted.

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Manilynn Disuanco - Week 3

When I first started to think about math and art the first thoughts to pop into my head were connect-the-dots pictures and paint by number images. Aren’t these the simplest forms of the merging of math and art? And to think we were exposed to these things at such a young age.

When I think of math I think of a very structured subject, with methods and formulas used to get a single right answer. While I find art to be quite the opposite, with never a right or wrong method to create a piece open to millions of interpretations. Yet, during lecture there were many artworks shown that displayed how math was already significantly a part of art even as early as 1316 with Duccio’s attempt at perspective. With his artwork, Annunciation, I saw how geometry, lines, and perspective subtly play out in art. It reminds me of architecture and the arts and architecture course offered here at UCLA. Most modern buildings in themselves have become works of steel and concrete art. Yet, to be an architect one has to be very familiar with math, especially geometry to create not only pretty but functional buildings.
Although I’m not the greatest artist in the world I do like to doodle and play around on Photoshop. I’ve noticed that when I do doodle (haha) I tend to like symmetry, draw patterns, lines, etc., images that draw from math aspects. It’s probably the left side of my brain mixing with my right. I am also a very visual person. If I see a graph in science or math class or if my ideas for an essay are laid out in a chart I tend to understand and do better. In this class it is easy to see how science can be used to create art, but I found it hard to see how art could enhance science. However, now I begin to notice little ways that art has snuck up into the science world.
A point about the methods of education that I found interesting was brought up in lecture by both Professor Vesna and guest speaker Casey Reas. They both disliked math in high school and wished that the subject was taught differently. I must say I agree with them both. It got me thinking that if there was more integration between the subjects taught to me in my high school I feel that not only would I have retained the information better but would have found interest in subjects I hadn’t liked before. Going back to what we had discussed in lecture last week the separating between disciplines is apparent. We also discussed in section whether or not specialization was beneficial. With the case of Casey Reas if he only specialized in art and knew nothing about computers he wouldn’t have been able to create the innovative pieces that he does today. Although it could be argued that specialization is efficient and that people would be happier doing something they loved, I say that to know a little bit of everything makes for the true Renaissance woman/man.

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Week 3 Section 4

When I first started to think about math and art the first thoughts to pop into my head were connect-the-dots pictures and paint by number images. Aren’t these the simplest forms of the merging of math and art? And to think we were exposed to these things at such a young age.
When I think of math I think of a very structured subject, with methods and formulas used to get a single right answer. While I find art to be quite the opposite, with never a right or wrong method to create a piece open to millions of interpretations. Yet, during lecture there were many artworks shown that displayed how math was already significantly a part of art even as early as 1316 with Duccio’s attempt at perspective. With his artwork, Annunciation, I saw how geometry, lines, and perspective subtly play out in art. It reminds me of architecture and the arts and architecture course offered here at UCLA. Most modern buildings in themselves have become works of steel and concrete art. Yet, to be an architect one has to be very familiar with math, especially geometry to create not only pretty but functional buildings.
Although I’m not the greatest artist in the world I do like to doodle and play around on Photoshop. I’ve noticed that when I do doodle (haha) I tend to like symmetry, draw patterns, lines, etc., images that draw from math aspects. It’s probably the left side of my brain mixing with my right. I am also a very visual person. If I see a graph in science or math class or if my ideas for an essay are laid out in a chart I tend to understand and do better. In this class it is easy to see how science can be used to create art, but I found it hard to see how art could enhance science. However, now I begin to notice little ways that art has snuck up into the science world.
A point about the methods of education that I found interesting was brought up in lecture by both Professor Vesna and guest speaker Casey Reas. They both disliked math in high school and wished that the subject was taught differently. I must say I agree with them both. It got me thinking that if there was more integration between the subjects taught to me in my high school I feel that not only would I have retained the information better but would have found interest in subjects I hadn’t liked before. Going back to what we had discussed in lecture last week the separating between disciplines is apparent. We also discussed in section whether or not specialization was beneficial. With the case of Casey Reas if he only specialized in art and knew nothing about computers he wouldn’t have been able to create the innovative pieces that he does today. Although it could be argued that specialization is efficient and that people would be happier doing something they loved, I say that to know a little bit of everything makes for the true Renaissance woman/man.

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Blogging Instructions

Each week by Sunday at midnight each student must post a 500-800 word blog entry. Reflect on the questions raised in Prof. Vesna's lecture, guest lectures, and readings. Connect these concepts to self-directed research. Provide one link for each post to something you've discovered. Examples are news articles about scientific, artistic, political events etc. that relates to class topics. Images are optional but enjoyable for everyone.

Use the "Create New Post" button in your "dashboard" once you've logged in. Use the buttons above the text box to add photos, links, and text formatting.

When Posting Always...

Label your post with your section in this format (without quotes): "Section 1"
This allows your TA to find your blog posts.

Email myself or your TA if you have technical issues.
oleary@ucla.edu
xarene@ucla.edu
zblas@ucla.edu
datadreamer@ucla.edu

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