There is a new age of artists among us. No longer is society subject to the ages of canvas and paper acting as primary places to find art in the art society. Artists are exploring. They are expanding. They are using the technological inventions of the last 50 years as their art. Video, audio and robotics are replacing paints and pencils as art works go further and further outside of the box of what people would have considered art 100 years ago. As more and more of these artists contribute the ideas, the possibilities of artistic expression grow more and more. The world is heading into the age of digital media.
There are many forms of digital media out there. Some artists prefer to use video, whereas other artists would rather use light to create sculptures. There is a special form of digital art which takes almost every aspect of the medium into consideration. That form is robotics. Everyone has gone to Disneyland, or somewhere similar, and has seen the robots in the rides. They enhance the experience, and create life in characters that, otherwise, would not be possible in a convincing way. Robots create artificial life. They simulate real motion. In a way, they perfect motion, by ridding themselves of every bit of motion that is not fundamental to their purpose. There are two artists in particular that bring robotics to life like no others can, showcasing their vast range of robotic experimentation to audiences all around the world: Ken Feingold and Stelarc.
Stelarc is a peculiar but fascinating artist who pushes the boundaries of robotics in each of his pieces. He has a belief in using robotics to “explore alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body.” His piece, “Walking Head Robot (2006),” explores this balance from almost an outside perspective, as it interacts with other things. The piece is fundamentally a spider-like robot. It has 6 legs that allow it to move around a gallery space in which it is placed. It’s relative size is small, being only 2 meters in diameter. Placed on top of its legs is an LCD screen with a computer generated human head that moves within the screen, as the screen moves from side to side. The human head itself gives an immense sense of life to the sculpture, as humans can easily relate to something else with a human head. A scanner in front of the LCD screen continuously scans the room in front of it to detect the presence of movement or people. When it detects something, it begins to move, thus interacting with people that it comes in contact with. It has pre-choreographed moves, making it still very controlled, but no less fascinating to watch. It makes a lot of sound while moving around, which may or may not have been Stelarc’s purpose, as it gives the voiceless head a certain voice of its own without saying a word (Stelarc).
Stelarc: Walking Head, Robotic Sculpture 2006
Ken Feingold has a method all his own with robotics, and has made a signature of it in the art community. His pieces, usually incorporating audio animatronics, tend to interact with each other in a strange way. His piece, "Self Portrait as the Center of the Universe (1998-2001),” for instance, gives a haunting yet entertaining look into the proposed notion of artificial intelligence, as a head (a likeness of Feingold himself) interacts with a projected head on a screen in front of the robot. Surrounding Feingold’s double is puppets, eerily staring out into the audience, giving a notion of actual attention towards something other than the interaction between the robot and the screen. These puppets would later be featured in Feingold’s piece, “Box of Men,” a video installation. The robotic head, as one would imagine, is Feingold’s literal interpretation of himself: a figure asking questions and seeking the answers. The head on the screen represents “questions and memories of himself,” as stated on his website. This side interacts with the physical head in more ways than one. Fascinatingly, the conversations between the two are completely improvisational. Using voice recognition technology, the two interact by listening to what the other had to say, and says something else as a response. The screen behind the image of the head changes as well to project what the physical head is talking about. In the video example below, the physical head speaks about the desert, and the screen shifts to a picture of the desert that moves with the head (Feingold)
documentation clip of "Self Portrait as the Center of the Universe" by Ken Feingold (1998-2001)
These two pieces are amazingly similar in many ways. The obvious way is that they both incorporate robotics to perform. They both move, as robotics should, but “Walking Robot Head” uses its entire body to move through a physical space. It can walk different places and even look different places when its head screen turns from side to side. “Self Portrait” is limited in its movement, and only physically moves its mouth and eyes to interact with the screen. The screen is filled with motion, as the head floats around its portrait, interacting with the physical head. Objects on screen move, and the background not only changes its image, but shifts around the screen.
Both pieces have a voice. “Self Portrait” has two literal voices of the physical robot and of the head on screen as they talk to each other. While the voices are the same, they take on their own lives with the figures that “speak” with them. “Walking Head Robot” does not have so much of a literal voice, as it has a powerful hiss of its mechanics working. However, with the head floating on the screen, the hiss lends itself quite nicely as the voice of the piece, making viewers more aware of the life inside of the robot.
Another obvious point to make is that both pieces incorporate a floating head on a screen. “Self Portrait” has a full color head interacting with the physical head of Feingold’s robot. “Walking Head Robot” uses a black and white (or black, white and blue) model on its screen to bring out a further connection with the audience.
On that note, the interaction with an audience is different, whereas “Walking Head Robot” interacts with physical people in the room with it using motion sensors. “Self Portrait” only interacts with itself, whether an audience is present or not. The only inkling of awareness that “Self Portrait” offers to its audience is the faces on the puppets around Feingold’s portrait robot, staring out into the crowd blankly.
One piece is definitely more lifelike than the other. “Self Portrait” is spooky to be around for many reasons. One of the dominant reasons could be in the fact that the “lifelike” head of Feingold’s robot is just that: lifelike. It’s not alive, but it pretends to be. It talks, blinks, and stares blankly at the screen. It is this proposes life in the piece that makes it rather foreboding, as the illusion continues with no awareness of what is going on around it. “Walking Head Robot,” however, is much less real. Most of it is comprised of bare, naked robotics, out there for anyone to see what it is. Feingold’s piece was covered to hide its mechanics, but the raw elements of Stelarc’s piece lend a sense of awareness to its artificial construct. The only thing bringing like to the piece is the head, which is captured within an LCD screen, making it disconnected from reality in the same way that no one would think people on television are really that small inside of a box in their own living room. It’s not the way the human brain is trained to function. The creepy factor is still there with the head floating slowly around the screen with a blank, black stare, but it does not give the same aura of the Feingold piece with such obviousness surrounding what it is truly made of.
Lovejoy would probably categorize these works differently.. She speaks of simulation by saying that “whereas mechanical servants hitherto rendered services which were essentially physical, automations generated by computer science and electronics can now carry out mental operations (Lovejoy 163).” She differentiated between pieces that seemingly have knowledge to their own existence, and those that don’t. “Self Portrait” would be the example of a piece that knows its own existence due to the nature of the conversation it has with itself. Answers aren’t programmed into it, but rather, it speaks based off of the last thing that its other half had to say. “Walking Head Robot” would count as the “mechanical servant.” All of its motions are pre-planned and controlled. Everything it does is physical, and there isn’t much it offers towards simulation, other than the head on the screen simulating itself as a human form.
Digital medias such as robotics have taken art to whole new heights. Much more can be expressed through the use of motion, sound, and spectacle that robotics provide in their own way. Pieces by Feingold and Stelarc prove that, even with their differences, different types of robotics offer different things. It’s the exploration of these things that contribute such advances in the art field that are so greatly appreciated by all who view it.
Bibleography
1. "Stelarc // Walking Head." Stelarc // Checking for Flash Plugin... Web. 25 Apr. 2011. <http://stelarc.org/?catID=20244>.
2. "Ken Feingold: "Self Portrait as the Center of the Universe" (1998-2001)." Ken Feingold: Recent Works. Web. 26 Apr. 2011. <http://www.kenfeingold.com/SelfL2.html>.
3. Lovejoy, Margot, and Margot Lovejoy. Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.
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