Abstract
Although the “robot” is a twentieth century concept, machines that conform to the same definition—are capable of carrying out complex actions automatically—are part of a much longer history. This chapter will provide an overview of this history. It will trace the contemporary emergence of the robot back to the appearance of clockwork and mechanical automata in the early modern period. In so doing, the chapter will make two key contributions to this book’s study of robots and art. Firstly, it will argue that the concept of a robot predates the emergence of the word robot by several centuries, and that our understanding of the contemporary concept is enriched by recognition of this longer history. Secondly, it will show that, from its very inception, the history of robots has been closely entwined with that of art—evident not least in the fact the term itself derives from the context of theatre. This history continues to be reflexively present in contemporary performance.
Tara Heffernan—Independent Scholar
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Notes
- 1.
In this respect, the “Musical Lady” and the other eighteenth-century automata discussed below are different from those mass-produced in the nineteenth century, which were commonly simple mechanical figures positioned on top of a hidden a music box. While the figure would make the motions of playing an instrument, it was the mechanism below which produced the actual music. The famous automata of eighteenth century were unique in that the figures played instruments themselves.
- 2.
- 3.
This automaton is now known to have been a hoax: while the “Chess Players” movement of the pieces was genuinely mechanical, and extraordinarily complex in its range of possibilities, the moves were determined by a human chess player, hidden inside the mechanism.
- 4.
The Musée des arts et métiers in Paris also has a number of eighteenth-century automata in its Théâtre des automates, including another Musical Lady made for Marie-Antoinette. This is no longer functional, however.
- 5.
Kathryn Hoffman notes that mechanical figures of breathing sleeping women were popular fairground exhibits throughout the nineteenth century [7, pp. 139–159].
- 6.
Indeed, the narrative of R.U.R recounts the growing resistance of the robots to their treatment by humans, until they rise to overthrow their oppressors, saving only one man whose responsibility will be the manufacture of new robots. In the process of annihilating the human race, however, the technological knowledge for the construction of robots is lost.
- 7.
Kinetic art is art that utilizes perceivable motion as either a component of or central feature in, the artwork. Emerging in the 1950s and 1960s, kinetic art revolutionized sculpture, freeing it “from static form and reintroduced the machine at the heart of the artistic debate” [10, p. 170]. An early example of kinetic art is George Rickey’s “Four Squares in a Square” (1972). This work involved four aluminium squares, each just over a meter squared, suspended on a steel pole nearly 7 m above the ground. Depending on the force of the wind, the would squares rotate, or flip from side to side, returning to create a flat surface when the wind was low [28, p. 277].
- 8.
Associated with the Dada movement, anti-art describes art (or ideas) that work in opposition to established aesthetic or conceptual norms, often employing objects or images from non-traditional sources and bringing them into gallery contexts in order to critique the values held by audiences and institutions [8].
- 9.
Cybernetic art describes artwork by practitioners that employ the premises of the field of cybernetics; the research of operating systems and communications in both machines and living things [29], to create works that interact (in varying degrees) with their environments. Often using complex sets of sensors, cybernetic art was seldom described as interactive. Rather, artists tended toward describing their works as responsive, or reactive [24].
- 10.
Robot Wars is a popular British television program that ran from 1998–2003. The series documented battles between the radio-controlled robotic creations of professional and amateur engineers [36].
- 11.
Telerobots are remotely-controlled robots. First conceived in the 1940s to handle radioactive materials, telerobots have historically been employed to perform tasks in inhospitable environments such as under the sea, or in space. However, with the growing accessibility of the Internet and technology in the twenty-first century, telerobotics are now used in a variety of fields, from education to arts and entertainment [25, p. 260].
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Stephens, E., Heffernan, T. (2016). We Have Always Been Robots: The History of Robots and Art. In: Herath, D., Kroos, C., Stelarc (eds) Robots and Art. Cognitive Science and Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0321-9_3
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