By Rebecca Ceccatelli. Cover image by Antonella Ramos.
How can we interact with Robotic art? Will a robot ever replace an artist in the role of performer? Humans can recognise other humans, whether they know them or not. A feeling, a tear, an action. Not only do we know and recognise others, but we also experience them on our skin. Your laughter is my laughter. Your tears are mine.
Human recognition is an automatic, contagious survival skill that is innate in human beings and motivates us to socialise and interact with others. Empathy means we can feel the pain of others in our bodies and their joy when they are happy. This is Robotic art too.
It is not a skill we need to learn or acquire, but it comes naturally to us. It is based on the discovery of mirror neurons by the Italian neurologist Giacomo Rizzolatti. These neurons are located in various areas of our brain, and they are responsible for the perception of external events in our own body.
For every action, there is a corresponding neural activation in the brain, which is the same as the one that occurs when we observe someone else perform the same action. All the visual impulses we receive synchronise with brain discharges in a process that helps us understand the experience better. This feeling of empathy towards your body enables me to recognise that you’re just like me – a human being.
Robotic art first query is about the role of art on mirror neurons
However, in some particular cases, what we perceive in our bodies is not necessarily generated by another human being. Have you ever felt triggered in front of the terrifying sharp teeth of Damien Hirst’s shark or reassured by the soft, reminiscent objects of Jeff Koons? Works of art have unconsciously tapped into our mirror neurons since the dawn of time.
Mirror mechanisms and embodied simulation occur similarly even when the action is depicted on a canvas or sculpted in marble. Even in the case of non-figurative artworks, the process of mental mimicry can lead the observer to feel the real motor movements and set of actions the artist experienced in the creative process, resulting in a deep sense of identification with the work.
Can we feel the same emotions in front of robots?
This is also what happens in the performative arts. Until recently, the presence of a human performer had always been considered essential. However, with the evolution of technology, new actors have made their way into the field of art: mechanical performers. While human performers have been able to evoke empathy in the audience by triggering their mirror neurons, it remains to be seen if robots can create the same emotional connection. How can we interact with them, and what criteria should be used to evaluate their performances?
From Marina Abramović to robotic art performances
Where does robotic art come from? In Balkan Baroque at the Venice Biennale of 1997, Marina Abramović tries to cleanse blood from 1500 bovine bones in an impossible attempt to erase the shame of war with a purification ritual made of raw scenes and passion. She is human. Her pain is human. And suddenly, we feel the dignity of one of the soldiers she’s trying to resurrect. We cry.
Fast forward to 2019, when an industrial robotic arm is tasked with cleaning blood from the floor in repeated, mechanical motion in a space enclosed by 3 clear acrylic walls at the Biennale again. It is its own blood.
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu created the artwork Can’t Help Myself with the specific purpose of containing a viscous, deep-red hydraulic liquid that keeps the machine functioning. However, the fluid constantly leaks, and when the machine’s sensors detect that it has moved too far, its arm frenetically shoves the liquid back into place, leaving streaks on the ground and splashes on the surrounding walls.
As spectators observe, they notice that the machine’s movements become increasingly desperate and tired. The machine knows that if it doesn’t stop leaking, it will eventually stop functioning altogether.
We feel empathy. We are tired of trying to survive. We feel the uselessness of our attempts.
In front of this robotic, endless, repetitive dance — almost a contemporary Sisyphus — we empathise with its suffering; the movements of its body become human, and we feel its exhaustion. Strangely, we perceive the performance of a robot as a representation of violence and rebellion against the toil of labour. How is it possible? Who are these robots?
Can Robotic art stimulate our emotions?
Recent neuroscience evidence suggests that the same brain areas that are activated by human vitality interaction can also be stimulated by robotic art, with robots’ actions mimicking human movements, thus conveying information about the robot’s “emotion state”.
For example, repetitive actions can express the joy or sadness of a robot or the agitation or calmness of a human-made object, which has the physical form of a living organism and behaves as such. These behaviours are based on empirical predictions derived from scientific theory. It’s like a simulation that can be in the form of physical and acting in physical objects in a physical environment or software operating in a computer. The purpose is always the same – to experiment with scientific theories and determine their outcomes.
Empathising with a spider-shaped robot: an experiment
In 2014, the London-based art collective Random International developed a kinetic installation that looked like a minimalist sculpture but actually concealed a scientific experiment. 15 Points explores the amount of information necessary for a moving form to be recognised as a human and how subtle chances within that information can have a fundamental impact. The installation consists of mechanical arms equipped with LED lights, challenging the idea of how fifteen points of light can simulate the impression of a walking person if positioned in order and animated in a particular way. Even the slightest manipulation of the points’ position can cause the form to revert back into an inorganic, geometric arrangement to the human eye. This raises questions such as: to what extent can we recognise a human being before transforming it into a “non-living category”? What are the elements that light up our mirror neurons, allowing us to empathise even with a spider-shaped robot?
What happens if these machines start interacting with us, becoming more and more like “social robots”?
Artist Chico MacMurtrie necessitated a space where to experiment and showcase its incessant studies about the robot-human relationship and their common perception. It is like this that he created The Robotic Church (1987-2006) in Brooklyn, where his creatures are the liturgy of a science: the robotic art.
A robot rolls on the floor right at our feet; others beat drums, and another one reaches the ceiling by climbing a rope. The space is filled with a dizzying cacophony of sounds – a screeching, a clattering, a whirring in the air. In just a few moments, we find ourselves becoming part of an electrifying, disordered performance.
We are exploring the evolution of MacMurtrie, from his first robots of the late ‘80s to the later ones with advanced kinetic abilities and refined movements, such as Urge to Stand and Transparent Body. As viewers, we find ourselves surrounded by a mesmerising choreography. In this circus, there are no humans present, and yet, machines entertain us anyway, serving as real, living performers.
It has been increasingly proven that anthropomorphism is the most significant factor that triggers the activation of our mirror neurons towards machines, including abstract and anthropomorphic robots. And that’s exactly how our brain is deceived, even when these techniques are used in art.
The incredible impact of anthropomorphic robotics
Zeugen by Morgan Rauscher is one of the early examples of anthropomorphic robotics used in art dating back to 2009-2010. The result of the artist’s interdisciplinary and holistic approach to understanding people and machines, combining art with technology, Zeugen consists of thirty-two human-cast robotic faces equipped with a face-tracking system that follows viewers’ movements in the gallery space. The artwork creates a self-reflexive space where the viewer is seeing and being seen in an act of voyeurism that is sparked solely by the human spectator’s presence in the space.
A face resembling your own gazes back at you with two eyes, a nose, and cheeks. But as you look closer, you realise that it’s actually your own two eyes, your nose, your cheeks that you’re looking at.
And what if you discover that, in 2019, a robot has even become a true painter with human-like features worthy of being present at the Venice Biennale? Now, it’s no longer just about a face, but it’s an entire body being reproduced with incredible accuracy. Ai-Da Robot, also known as the artist robot, is one of the most outstanding examples of how technology has progressed to create a true replica of a human being that can even paint. And it does it in front of amazed audiences, blending painting and performance into a stunning work of art.
The Uncanny Valley phenomenon: a robot should be “human”, but not too much
After all, however, being the world’s first ultra-realistic artist robot carries a great burden with it. And this responsibility is called the Uncanny Valley. Over time, art has developed new media to interact and embody the spectator in the artwork. This resulted in a true physical mirror of the self, where we can observe our body from the outside in an ultra-terrestrial experience.
Recent studies conducted by Masahiro Mori, a professor in robotics, have concluded that when a machine has vaguely human-like features, we tend to empathise and feel empathy towards it. However, the more the robot resembles a real human being, the more unease it creates in us. This phenomenon is called the Uncanny Valley because, in a graph illustrating the emotional response of a human elicited by a robot, there is a significant drop when the robot has a too “human” appearance. It is an actual true valley in the graphic.
It is worth considering to what extent a robot could replace a human artist in the role of performer before becoming an unsettling character of a science fiction movie with a tragicomic ending.
Until what point will we consider a robot as one of us, and when will it become just a disturbing machine that resembles us terribly? With the rise of artificial intelligence and the progression of new technologies, new answers will soon emerge.
