Abstract
Robotic Art and related practices provide a context in which real-time computational technologies and techniques are deployed for cultural purposes. This practice brings the embodied experientiality, so central to art hard up against the tacit commitment to abstract disembodiment inherent in the computational technologies. In this essay I explore the relevance of post-cognitivist thought to robotics in general, and in particular, questions of materiality and embodiment with respect to robotic art practice—addressing philosophical, aesthetic-theoretical and technical issues.
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Notes
- 1.
Fast, cheap and out of control’ Errol Morris, 1997, featured Australian roboticst Rodney Brooks, among others.
- 2.
He continued “but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists.” Instigations of Ezra Pound (1967).
- 3.
Silent Barrage. https://vimeo.com/5620739, accessed 6 June 2014.
- 4.
As with any long-term project, there is a variety of milestone dates for Petit Mal. The project was designed and the aluminium frame constructed in 1989. The major sensor and electro-mechanical parts (sensor head, motor-wheel system in the ensuing couple of years, and simple solutions to control electronics were made. In 1993, the GCB (68hc11 based) microcontroller was introduced to the system and serious software development and testing ensued.
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simonpenny.net.
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The CAVE, a recursive acronym for Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, was an arrangement of (usually four) stereographic projection screens arranged as sides of a cube surrounding the user, who wore shutter glasses and whose position and gaze orientation was tracked, usually with Polhemus magnetic sensors.
- 8.
The first use of the term “singularity” in this context was by mathematician John von Neumann. In 1958. Ray Kurzweil cited von Neumann’s use of the term in a foreword to von Neumann's classic The Computer and the Brain.
- 9.
British neuroscientist and cybernetician Grey Walter famously built two simple autonomous robots, Elmer and Elsie, in the late 1940s.
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- 11.
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Penny, S. (2016). Robotics and Art, Computationalism and Embodiment. 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_4
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