Over dinner last night, a friend and I were talking about robot art. She mentioned that a former student of hers delivered a presentation arguing that art created by robots was still art – just as long as the creation of and the manipulation of the robots remained in the hands of a human.
In the above case, Alexander McQueen carefully pinpoints the robots’ movements in order to create the black and yellow design on the white dress. The end result is a design created and manipulated by a human but performed by robots. Read more about Dress, No. 13, spring/summer 1999 here. McQueen admits, “It was really carefully choreographed. It took a week to program the robots” (Source).
Robot art is such an interesting concept because of many antiquated definitions of creativity and design, and I love when people constantly push that boundary and get people asking themselves and others, “Is this art?” When do you think art by robot stops being “art?”
