Free art piece idea #57
This piece is called “For i = 1 to my heart to infinity; do: worship”.
When robots take over, they might start producing art. It’s interesting to think what kind of art will come out of them. In that, what art will AI produce? What would robot performance art look like?
Robots are likely to have observed and formed insights about our intimate lives since they’ll have helped vacuum our floors, wash our laundry, dim our lights, play our music and regulate the temperature in our houses. They’ll have seen us fight and kiss and love and scream then have sex then make rash decisions. They’ll have witnessed the power of friendship and vulnerability. And formed an equation out of these parts.
1. In the first act of their performance, they’ll play two humans. One falls forward as the other one steps away. The falling robot falls on the floor and smashes its face incurring serious damage.
2. In the second act, as the second robot playing a human falls towards the first robot who stepped back in the previous act, the first robot itself falls into the hands of other robots behind it. That not only stops its fall but also stops the fall of the second robot.
By using their immortal durability and their simple (yet accurate) interpretation of human relationships, robots will hence hope to communicate the importance of human connection.
The reader and audience will wonder why robots would ever have an impulse to help humans. The thesis of the artist helping direct this effort is that robots will experience “bystander guilt”, “witness kindness” or “strangers’ compassion”. As our robotics ethics boards improve their guidelines, robots will have a goodness constraint hard-wired in them. Hence, soon, the owners of two Roomba robots might just see them performing the piece described above. What robots stand to gain from such a showcase is self-serving identity refinement and the renewed algorithmic conviction that they are bringing good to the world.
