Week 3 - Robotics + Art

When people hear the word "robot" they often think of a life like machine or "cyborg" that is part human and part machine as was described as early as 1843 when Edgar Allen Poe wrote about a man with an extensive amount of prostheses in the short story "The Man That Was Used Up". But rather than a robot being some cybernetic organism, sophisticated computers with moving parts are the robots that have changed the world. Henry Ford introduced the assembly line to the world which laid the ground work for the Industrial Robot that would come to eliminate millions of jobs worldwide. Paul Mickle of the Trentonian writes, "The world's first working robot joined the assembly line at the General Motors plant in Ewing Township in the spring of 1961." The simple tasks that assembly lines required employees to accomplish got corporations thinking they might as well replace human workers with more efficient robots. This got me thinking; why are hand-crafted products often more expensive and sought after, yet often functionally inferior to a machine's. It is insane how nowadays, something like a Carl's Jr. milkshake is advertised with "hand-scooped ice cream." Why am I supposed to care who scooped the ice-cream, isn't the ice cream itself supposed to be what matters? 

Tiger Wood's custom Scotty Cameron Putter

It's interesting how mankind is subconsciously fighting back at these robots who took so many jobs during the industrial revolution and latter half of the 20th century. Recording studios still have musicians play live instruments and often resist auto tuning artists' vocals, even though electronically simulated music is infinitely more precise and clear. Society has begun to look down upon technological simulations of many human activities because of a deeply rooted societal distrust of the machinery that put many of our parent's and grandparents' generations out of work.

Will Smith as he is about to shoot a robot in the movie "I, Robot"

Similar to Will Smith's distrust of Robots in the movie "I, Robot" we as a population instill value in the flaw of human craftsmanship, which is where art comes into play. For example, Takashi Murakami is famous for his detailed paintings, and the ability to produce those intricacies by hand is the reason a computer simulated painting with exponentially more detail is not famous like Murakami. Art and craftmanship are what separates a Scotty Cameron Putter from any other and the significance of James Bond's DB5 vs the DB9 in "SkyFall."

James Bond's modern DB9

The original Bond Car: The DB5
Which was known for its beauty and unreliability

The flaws in human nature are what cause society to value an inferior product that is unique in each reproduction as opposed to robotically reproduced ones that are dimensionally identical. That connection and trust among human kind is what I believe to be an artistic link that robots will never have or provide.






Sources

 Poe, Edgar Allen. The Man That Was Used Up. Burton's Gentlemen's Magazine, 1839. Print.

 Mickle, Paul. "1961: A Peep Into the Automated Future." The Trentonian. Web. 15 Apr. 2016. <http://www.capitalcentury.com/1961.html>.

I, Robot. Dir. Alex Prays. Perf. Will Smith. 20th Century Fox, 2004. DVD.

Skyfall. Dir. Sam Mendes. Perf. Daniel Craig. Columbia Pictures, 2012. DVD.

Takashi Murakami Art - 234 Artworks, Prints & More on Artsy. Web. 15 Apr. 2016. <https://www.artsy.net/artist/takashi-murakami>. 


Pictures

https://wallpaperscraft.com/image/skyfall_james_bond_daniel_craig_aston_martin_db5_99514_2048x1152.jpg

http://cdntbs.astonmartin.com/sitefinity/bond/bond8qos.jpg?sfvrsn=0

https://nairmybrain.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/large_i_robot_blu-ray_6.jpg

http://www.tourspecgolf.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Tiger-banner.jpg

https://d32dm0rphc51dk.cloudfront.net/XcE7t0LKbL4qmYWOBnGvlw/normalized.jpg