Week 3: Robots: Good or Bad?

Robots have always held an interesting place in our society. On the one hand, we recognize their value in industrialization and our industrial world today. When they replace human manual labor, they produce objects with great accuracy and require much less than a human worker: food, water, sleep, time off, etc. And while this may seem like a wonderful thing, it begs the question, "will machines replace the usefulness of humanity?" (Humans Need Not Apply).

In this way, robots also hold a threatening position in our society. We depict them in movies sometimes to be terrifying beings, beings that threaten our society and way of life. Take for example the movie "The Rise of the Machines", part of The Terminator series. Here, these robots are depicted as scary entities, they are not friendly nor warm in appearance, and they are something to be battled, to be fought in the movie.

The Rise of the Machines

Another way in which machine and automation are threatening our society, is in the way that it supposedly is threatening our art. Walter Benjamin argues that what makes art, art is its "aura", composed of its authenticity, the effect it had when it was published or created at the specific time and place that it was, and how it has progressed as a piece of art through the ages. He argues that mechanical reproduction of art necessarily ruins its aura (Benjamin). 

Douglas Davis recognizes that art is easily reproducible in this day and age but argues that this reproducibility is actually enhancing art, making it more accessible, and increasing the frequency at which people view the piece (Davis).

Robots and automation are becoming an even larger part of our society with each passing day and each technical innovation. We live with machines, they build things for us and are an integral part of our economy. Yet we still fear them. We fear that they will take over our jobs. We fear that they will make our art obsolete. But it doesn't have to be us versus them, man versus the machine. Even if machines take over many of our human jobs, I believe that this will only push artistic creativity. If we don't have to spend our time farming, working in factories, building things, then we can focus our energy as a society on more artistic and creative endeavors.  Robots do not have to be a threatening force, and what Professor Kusahara says about the Japanese aiming to make robots friendly and welcoming is a wonderful idea (Robotics Machiko Kusahara). I am excited to see how our society can integrate automata and robots and mechanization into our art. 

Sources: 

"Humans Need Not Apply." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 18 Apr. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU>.

Benjamin, Walter, and J. A. Underwood. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

Davis, Douglas. The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (An Evolving Thesis 1991-1995). Leonardo, Vol. 28, no. 5, Third Annual New York Digital Salon. (1995), pp. 381-386.

"Robotics MachikoKusahara 1." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 19 Apr. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQZ_sy-mdEU>.

"Robotics Pt1." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 19 Apr. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRw9_v6w0ew>.