My Vacuum Cleaner Can Knit

There is a new attraction at the Annkya Kulty’s Gallery in East London.  Ai-Da, an artist who resembles a young woman, is actually a robot whose mechanical arm can sketch faces in either pencil or ink.

 

Ai-Da’s is something of an instant sensation, her works are selling well, she has delivered her own Ted Talk, and a series of sculptures have been made from her paintings.  The last has me a little puzzled, why didn’t they just plug a 3-D printer into her and stand back while she made her own sculptures?

 

Recently, Ai-Da has even branched out into performance art, performing an homage to Yoko Ono’s show, Cut Piece.  If you are unfamiliar with this work, Yoko would sit stoically on the stage in her best clothes while members of the audience would step forward and cut away pieces of her clothing with a pair of scissors.  (Yes, I know what you are thinking.  When I first heard about the show, I initially had pretty much the same reaction, but you should watch it on Youtube before you pass judgement.  I’m not going to ruin your experience by explaining too much, but be prepared to be shocked.)

 

Somehow, watching people slowly cut away the drapes to reveal the equivalent of a toaster oven is probably not going to evoke the same strong emotional reaction.  Homage or not, the work is derivative, and that is precisely the problem with Ai-Da: she is incapable of creativity. 

 

Despite the publicity, personally, I don’t think Ai-Da is really an artist, she is more like an anthropomorphic copying machine.  Instead of admiring the machine’s artistic accomplishments, we should be celebrating the creativity of her programmers, a team of engineers from Oxford.

 

Still, this is an early example, and we can still be sure that more robotic art is one the way.  But is it really art?   Currently retired, I decided to return to the university as a student rather than slowly develop an interest in daytime television.  Before studying art history, I probably would have defined art by quoting Justice Potter Stewart, “I know it when I see it.”

 

Now that I’ve studied art, I increasingly know that I don’t even know art when I see it.  I can think of any number of paintings that I have learned to love over time as I learned more about them.  No matter how much I learn about Ai-Da, I doubt that I will ever consider her work as more than a curiosity.  But, she is just the first of what I am sure will be a long line of future robot artists. 

 

We are just starting to see the onslaught of robots in our lives.  Oh, sure, factories have lots of robotic assembly lines, but it is arguable whether those actually reduce employment.  The design, maintenance, and supervision of such robots may provide more skilled jobs than the unskilled factory jobs they replace.

 

Increasingly, however, robots are replacing ordinary jobs.  It is getting hard to find a human cashier in a grocery store.  Robotic vacuums, once a novelty for the home, are starting to be used in commercial operations.  And robotic security guards, resembling the Daleks from Dr. Who, are patrolling parking lots and warehouses.  And just over the horizon are the hordes of driverless cars and trucks that threaten to replace thousands of workers.

 

For decades, there has been a running joke about the days when our machines would rise up and threaten their masters.  In the movies and novels, it was always massive killing machines, cyborgs sent by Skynet who cannot be stopped that wreak violence on mankind.  Maybe, we have it all wrong—maybe the robot uprising is actually going to be a peaceful revolt.  Instead of protracted warfare, maybe it will be a slow creep of household helpers and driverless cars, robotic artists, and a self-driving Chevy that slowly makes the human race superfluous.   Perhaps, humans faced with the overwhelming superiority of our mechanical assistants, will just give up and develop that taste for daytime television that I’ve been trying to escape.

 

Naturally, this reminds me of an old story about a futuristic robot arguing with his exasperated owner.   The cold logic of the mechanical man, with his steady stare and unemotional voice completely infuriated the man—that plus the fact the owner had slowly realized that he was wrong and his robot was right. 

 

“Shut UP!, roared the man.  “You mechanical monster, if you don’t shut up, I’ll pull your damn plug.”  In fury, the man reached down and snatched up a long black power cord that ran to a nearby electric outlet.

 

“But—“, began the robot, only to be cut off by a scream of fury from the man.

 

“I warned you,” thundered the man, ripping the cord from the wall with a flourish.

 

Slowly, the robot shook his head as he spoke softly while staring at the immobile form of the man.  “I tried to tell him that him that he was pulling his own cord.”