Foundation and Development of Robotic Art
Author(s): Eduardo Kac
Source: Art Journal, Vol. 56, No. 3, Digital Reflections: The Dialogue of Art and Technology(Autumn, 1997), pp. 60-67
Published by: College Art Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777838
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Foundation
andDevelopmentof Robotic Art
Eduardo Kac
A electronic media become more pervasive in today's early 1960s in the United States and in about twentyyears
culture, the role of robotics in contemporaryart, had developed a strongholdin industrial facilities aroundalong with video, multimedia, performance, the world. Industrialrobots,programmedto performa spetelecommunications,and interactive installations, needs to cific task or set of tasks, were able to perform repetitive
be considered. In this article I propose to define a frame- motionstirelessly.They increased productivityand prompt6 workfor the understandingand analysis of roboticart. I will ed furtherresearchaimed at improvingtheir efficiency.It is
discuss three pivotal artworksfromthe 1960s that outlined clear thatfromthis perspectiverobotsare advancedcomputthe genesis of roboticsin artand thatformedthe basis of the er-controlledelectromechanicalappliances.
three main directions in which robotic art has developed.
If artistsworkingwith or interestedin roboticscannot
This article will also elucidate the new issues raised by cur- ignore mythological, literary, or industrial definitions ofrent robotic artworksand clarify their relationship to the robotsand artificiallife forms,it is also true that these defimain paths defined by those three early works.
nitions do not directly apply to any given robotic artwork.
One of the most problematicissues of robotics in art Each artist explores robotics in particularways, developingis the very definition of what a robot is. Complicatingmat- strategiesthat often hybridizerobotswith other media, systers, on the one hand, we have mythological traditions of tems, contexts, and life forms. As artists continue to pushvarious cultures. These traditionshave given rise to fantas- the very limits of art, traditionallydefined by discrete andtic synthetic creatures, such as the ancient Greek story of inert handmade objects, they introduce robotics as a new
Galatea-a statue brought to life by the goddess medium at the same time that they challenge our underAphrodite-or the Jewish legend of the Golem, a speech- standing of robots-questioning thereforeour premises inless anthropoid made of clay by humans. On the other conceiving, building, and employingthese electronic creahand, we find more recent literary traditions offering fic- tures. The fascination robots exert on the population attional profiles of automata,robots, cyborgs, androids, tele- large has unexploredsocial, political, and emotionalimplirobots, and replicants. Intriguingliterary artificial beings cations. These implications must be coupled, if they are tohave excited the imagination of readers worldwide: Mary be properly understood in the contemporaryart context,
Shelley's Frankenstein, Gustav Meyrink's Golem, Karel with the new aesthetic dimension of modelingbehaviorand
Capek's robots in the play R.U.R. (which introduced the developing unprecedented interactive communicativesceworldto the Czech word"robot"),RobertHeinlein's Waldo, narios in physical or telematic spaces.
Isaac Asimov's Cutie-to name a few. The literary robotic
The works highlighted in this article often evade any
canon is further expanded by the presence of robots in narrow definition of robotics-except, perhaps, for thefilm: Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Fred Wilcox's Forbidden principle of giving precedence to behavior over form.
Planet, George Lucas's Star Wars, Ridley Scott's Blade Sticking to a narrowdefinition seems less importantthan
Runner. Television further popularized the image of the the opportunityto trace parallels between strategies thatcomputing companion (Irwin Allen's Lost in Space), the foreground at times electronic creatures ("robotic art"),cyborg (Harve Bennett's The Six Million Dollar Man), and and at other times a combinationof organic and electronic
the sophisticated androidand the evil mixtureof flesh and ("cybernetic art"), or the remote projection of a human
electronics (Gene Rodenberry'sStar Trek).
subject onto a telerobot ("telepresence art"). Not only do
Anotheraspect of the problemis the operationaldefi- these artforms seem directly related conceptually,but theynition of robotsas found in scientific research and industri- also appear hybridizedin several works.
al applications.The firstcommercialrobotsappearedin the
Whereas prototypes of noncommercial robots were
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developed in the 1950s, notablyfor entertainmentand scientific research, it was not until the 1960s that the firstrobotic artworks were created. As developed in these
decades, kinetic art helped to free sculpture from static
formand reintroducedthe machine at the heart of the artistic debate. Influenced by this context, but already opening
up new directions that privileged interactivity and behavioral concerns, three artworkscreated in the mid- and late1960s stand as landmarks in the development of robotic
art: Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe's RobotK-456 (1964),
TomShannon'sSquat (1966), and EdwardIhnatowicz'sTheSenster(1969-70). Although these works are significant intheir own right, they acquire a particular meaning whenreconsidered today,since seen together they also configurea triangle of new aesthetic issues that has continually
informedthe main directions in robotic art. With Paik andAbe's Robot K-456 (fig. 1), a humorous and politicallycharged piece, the problem of remote control, free mobility, and interaction with the public is introduced. With
Shannon'sSquat we see the first interactive artworkthat is
an organic and inorganic hybrid, raising the question of
cybernetic entities so relevant to current debates. In Ihnatowicz's Senster,also an interactive piece, we find the first
instance of behavioral autonomy in art, in which a given
personalityis assigned to the robot,which then responds tohumans and changing situations on its own.
Named after one of Mozart'spiano concerti (K6chel
number 456), Paik and Abe's twenty-channel remote-controlled anthropomorphicrobot first performedin a private
space (Robot Opera, at Judson Hall, in collaborationwith
CharlotteMoorman)and on the streets, both as part of theSecond Annual New YorkAvant-GardeFestival, in 1964.
As Paik guided it through the streets, K-456 played arecording of John F. Kennedy's inaugural address andexcreted beans. K-456, which is now in the Hauser andWirth private collection, in Zurich, was reactivated once
again in 1982, when the Whitney Museumof AmericanArt
hosted Paik's retrospective exhibition. On that occasion,
the artist staged an accident in which RobotK-456 was hit

FIG. 1 Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe, Robot K-456, 1964. Courtesy
George Hirose.

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FIG. 2 TomShannon,Squat,1966. Courtesythe artist.

6by a car. For this performance,titled The First Catastrophe one thousand cubic feet. Its head had sensitive microof the Twenty-firstCentury, K-456 was removed from its phones and motion detectors, providing sensorial input
museum pedestal and guided by the artist down the street that was processed by a digital Philips minicomputer into the intersection of 75th Street and Madison Avenue. real time. The Senster'supper body consisted of six indeWhen crossing the avenue, the robot was "accidentally" pendent electrohydraulic servo-mechanisms with six
hit by an automobiledriven by the artist William Anastasi. degrees of freedom. Responding to motions and sounds
With this performancePaik suggested the potential prob- within one or two seconds, The Senster gently moved its
lems that arise when technologies collide out of human head toward quieter and more subtle viewers. Loud andcontrol. After the "collision," K-456 was returned to its agitated viewers saw the creature shy away and protect
itself from potential harm. In its sensual, and apparently
pedestal in the museum.
Less traumaticis the kind of contact enabled by Tom intelligent, behavior,the piece was very engaging to a wide
Shannon's work. Created only two years later, Shannon's audience. While the debate on the use of computers in art
Squat (fig. 2) was a cybernetic system wiringa live plant to at the time revolved aroundthe creation of still or sequena roboticsculpture. In this early formof cybernetic interac- tial images, and the use of static or mobile plotters to protive art,Shannonallowedthe electric potentialof the human duce such images, Ihnatowicz merged software-based
body to triggeran organicswitch. When viewers touchedthe parametricbehaviorwith physical presence in a real spaceplant, the electricitywas amplifiedand turnedon the motors as he introducedthe first computer-controlledartwork.
of the roboticsculpture,which then moved. On human-plant
Further contributing to this nascent field in 1974,
retracted
andextended its three legs as well Norman White created Menage, an installation with fivecontact, Squat
as its two arms, creating undulating motion and humming light-scanning robots. This installation was composed ofand chirping sounds. If the viewer touched the plant again, four robots moving back and forth along separate ceilingthe piece returnedto its resting state.
tracks and a fifth robot positioned on the floor. Each creaWhereas tactile participationis crucial to Squat, the ture had a scanner (which caused each robot to point tovoice and proximityof viewers promptresponsive behavior strong light sources) and a spotlight mounted at its center.
in Ihnatowicz'swork. Workingin relative isolation in Eng- Because of the central position of their own light source,
land, after emigratingfrom his native Poland and studying the ceiling robots tended to stare at one another.However,at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford, despite the apparentsimplicity of this arrangement,a more
EdwardIhnatowicz(1926-1988), perhaps the least known dynamic behavior emerged once their motors pulled themof the three pioneers, created The Senster (fig. 3), a bio- apart and the gaze-locking interplay resumed. If in themorphic computer-controlled robotic creature with shy three pioneering works discussed, Paik, Shannon, andbehavior that was shown at Evoluon, the permanentshow- Ihnatowiczworkedwith individual robots, and if their conplace of the manufacturing firm Philips, in Eindhoven, tributionto robotic art can be said to be circumscribed toHolland, from 1970 to 1974, when it was dismantled. these pieces, White's position is different. He tried to creBased on the articulation of a lobster's claw, The Senster ate a small communitythat would exhibit collective behavwas about fifteen feet long and eight feet high, occupying ior and is the first artist to have consistently championed
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FIG. 3 EdwardIhnatowicz,TheSenster,1969-70. CourtesyOlga Ihnatowicz.

FIG. 4 NormanWhite,TheHelplessRobot,1985. Courtesythe artist.

robotics as an art form throughoutthe years. He has produced a number of different and intriguing pieces, mostnotably TheHelplessRobot(fig. 4), a robot originally madein 1985 that converses with viewers and requests theirassistance to spin it, changing its behavior in time if it gets
more or less help. White considers The Helpless Robot
unfinished (possibly unfinishable), and since 1985 he has
modified it many times. TheHelplessRobotwas shown publicly for the first time in 1988. In its current state (1997), it
is controlled by two cooperating computers, both programmedby White. One computeris responsible for tracking the angular position of the rotating section anddetecting human presence with an arrayof infraredmotion
detectors. The other computeranalyzes this informationin
relation to past events and generates an appropriatespeech
response. This work humorously reverses the polarity ofrobot-humanrelationships, asking humans to help an electronic creatureconventionallydesigned to be a human aid.
Also working with sensors and microcontrollers ininteractive situations, James Seawright-known forresponsive kinetic sculptures such as Watcher(1965-66)
and Searcher(1966) and for early interactive installations(which he termed "reactive environments")such as Electronic Peristyle (1968) and NetworkIII (1971)-developed
computer-controlledrobotic works in which the softwarebased comportmentof the piece seems to achieve a sophisticated level of behavior as it interacts with theenvironment and the public. His Electronic Garden #2(1983) is composed of five computer-controlled robotic
flowers. Responding to climate parameters, such as temperatureand humidity,these electronic flowerswere originally installed in a public space as an indoor garden.
Viewers could also alter the flowers' behavior by pushingbuttons that modified the programinstalled in the custombuilt microprocessor.These electronic flowers suggest thepossibility of a harmonious integration between humans,
nature,and technology,at the same time that they poeticize
responsive electronics in analogy with ornamentalplants.
Taking this concept further, in 1984 Seawright createdHouse Plants (fig. 5), two computer-controlled robotic
flowers. House Plants used a computer (a custom-built
microprocessor)to give the electronic plants their environmentally responsive behavior. While the taller plant
opened its four petals at night reacting to changing lightlevels, the shorter,domed plant produced a peculiar soundpatternas small disks opened and closed. Both plants displayed dynamic blinking light patterns:on the inside of thepetals of the taller one (made visible when opened), and on
the surface of the spherical top of the shorterone. If placedin a gallery setting, both plants were programmedto exhibit their behavior simultaneously. Cybernetic botany is atheme that has been explored by the artist in multiple
pieces and in differentversions of single pieces.
With its emphasis on behavior,it was only a matterof
time for robotic art to expand its realm of possibilities into
theatrical and performativeevents. Twoof the most prominent artists of the generation that emerged in the 1970s
who work with robotics are Mark Pauline and Stelarc. In
1980 Pauline cofounded, with MatthewHeckert and Eric
Werner,the Survival Research Laboratories,or SRL, a collaborative team that since then has created multiplemachine performances combining music, explosives,
radio-controlled mechanisms, violent and destructive
action, fire, liquids, animal parts, and organic materials. In
the seventeen years that stand between its foundation andthe present, SRL has developed machines and robots andhas staged performancesin Europe and the United States,
all too numerousand varied to be fully covered here. These
works are markedby visceral violence and entropic choreography,often culminating in a cathartic self-destructive
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FIG. 5 JamesSeawright,HousePlants,1984. Courtesythe artist.

FIG. 6 SurvivalResearchLaboratories,
scene fromCrimeWave,realizedin SanFranciscoon November28, 1995. Thisimageshows
the RunningMachineattackinga victimprop.CourtesyMarkPauline.

Stelarc'sfirst robotic performancesin 1981 were The Third
Hand (Tamura Gallery, Tokyo) and Deca-Dance (Komai
Gallery,Tokyo).In The ThirdHand performance,the artist
explored the possibility of writingTHE THIRDHAND simultaneously with his right hand and his third hand. In DecaDance, he experimented with human and robotic
choreographicgestures. Since 1981 Stelarc has been creating amplified body performances in which he expands
the powerand reach of the humanbody by wiring it to electronic devices and telecommunications systems. In these
performanceshe has combined the third hand with manyother technological components,including sensing devices
conventionally used in medicine. On occasion Stelarc has
also performedin the company of industrial robotic arms.
Morerecently he has also used prosthetictechnologies thatphysically wire his body and enable remote and direct
muscle stimulation, which result in involuntary gesturesand body motions uncontrollableby the artist.
Stelarc clearly understandsthat in the absence of theobject that is being controlled, remote control and manipulation create a new situation for performance,robotic, andinteractive art. As a consequence of my own desire to pushtelecommunicationsart into a more physical domain, since
1989 I have been developing, with Ed Bennett, what I call
telepresenceart, coupling robotics and telecommunications
into new forms of communicative experiences that enable
participantsto project their presence into a geographically
FIG. 7 Stelarc,The ThirdHand,1981. Courtesythe artist.
distant place. The word telepresencerefers to the experiextravaganza.These robotic spectacles of discomfort,fear, ence of having a sense of one's own presence in a remoteand actual destruction are meant as commentaries on space (and not the sense of somebody else's remote pressocial issues, particularlyin regard to ideological control, ence, as is common on the telephone). Telepresence art isabuse of force, and technological domination. In 1981, for hardly conceivable withoutthe use of live video, but unlike
example, Pauline mechanically animated dead animals, video art, telepresence art emphasizes, not the video image
evoking Frankensteinian fears and suggesting the larger- itself, but the point of view defined by the intermediatedthan-humanpowers of technology.Rabot, for example, was gaze. Other artists have subsequently pursued this basic
produced by grafting a mechanical exoskeleton to the premise with very engaging results. In 1995 Ken Goldberg,
entire body of a dead rabbit, causing it to walk backward. Joseph Santarromana, George Bekey, Steven Gentner,
These and many other large machines, animal-machine RosemaryMorris,Carl Sutter,and Jeff Wiegley collaborathybrids, and robotic or computer-controlleddevices have ed to create the TeleGarden(fig. 8), a Web telepresence
animated SRLs loud and often controversial pyrotechnic
events, such as Crime Wave(fig. 6), realized in November
1995 in San Francisco, or more recently, The Unexpected
Destructionof ElaboratelyEngineeredArtifacts,realized in
March 1997 in Austin, Texas.
By contrast, Stelarc has focused his work on his own
body, to which he first attached a third (robotic)arm, only
to expand his suspension events into complex performances that have evolved cyborg and post-human
metaphors,raising the issue of evolution and adaptationin
our highly technological environment. The Third Hand
(fig. 7), a five-finger robotic hand activated by abdominal
and leg muscles, was built in 1981 with the assistance of
Imasen Denki, based on a prototypeby Ichiro Kato.Among FIG. 8 KenGoldbergand others,TeleGarden,1995. Courtesythe artist.
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installation. TeleGardenenabled anyone on the Web toplant and water seeds in a real living garden using an
industrialrobotarm.This garden, six feet in diameter,soon
filled with marigolds, peppers, and petunias. Participants,
who became "members"of this virtual cooperative, could
also plant seeds, waterthe plants, and discuss co-op policy
via an on-line chat system. The project explored the evolution of community on the Web, in particular the analogy
with the agrarianrevolution which established the conditions for cultural communities.
Also in 1995, Nina Sobell and Emily Hartzell, working in collaboration with New York University Center for
Advanced Technology engineers and computer scientists,
created Alice Sat Here (fig. 9a, b), originally shown at
Ricco/Maresca Gallery in New York.In this piece a camera-equipped wheelchair was steered by local and remoteparticipants, with sequential uploads to the Web. While
local participants were able to sit on and steer Alice's
throne, remote visitors could control camera direction. A
monitor in the gallery's front window showed real-timevideo from the point of view of the wheelchair-mounted
wireless camera, which was then displayed as sequential
stills on the Web. Touchpadsin the frontwindowsurrounded the monitor.Participants pressing the touchpads werecaught in the act of controlling the throne's camera: theirimages were captured by the small camera mounted atop
the monitor.The throne itself was controlled not remotely,
but by people actually driving it around.The small camera
mountedon top of the monitoroverlappedthe street participant's image with the image captured from the point ofview of the wheelchair-mountedcamera prior to the Web
upload. This piece touched on the multiple levels of control
as participants oscillated between physical space and66

FIG. 9a, b Nina Sobell and Emily Hartzell, Alice Sat Here, 1995. Courtesy

the artists.

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cyberspace.
As telepresence art departs from "straightrobotics,"
many artists still pursue issues of autonomyof the robotic
body in space beyond biomorphism.In 1996, Simon Penny,for example, created his autonomousrobot Petit Mal (fig.
10). The title of this piece is a medical term that refers to a
momentary loss of consciousness. Having first designed
Petit Mal in 1989, Penny began to build it in 1992. As anautonomousrobotic artwork,it explores architecturalspaceand pursues and reacts to people. Its behavior is neither
anthropomorphicnor zoomorphicbut is unique to its electronicnature.It has three ultrasonicsensors and three bodyheat sensors that allow it to recognize the presence ofhumans near it. Petit Mal was designed to be lightweight,
durable,and mechanicallyefficient,which gave it a "laboratoryprototype"physiognomy.By coveringpartsof the robot's
body with a printed vinyl tablecloth, the artist intended tochange its appearance.Petit Mal consists of a pairof bicycle
wheels that supporta pair of pendulums suspended from asingle axis. The top pendulum houses a processor,sensors,

67

FIG. 10 Simon Penny, Petit Mai,

1992-95. Courtesythe artist.

and logic power supply. The bottom pendulum encloses cybernetic entities, and autonomousbehavior, as first outmotorsand motorpowersupply.Sensors are kept in a verti- lined by Paik, Shannon, and Ihnatowicz, define the three
cal position despite the swing that results fromacceleration. key directions that have informed the development ofPetit Mal functions autonomouslyin a public environment robotics in art. Today,as artistic freedom promotes robotic
for many hours beforeits batteriesneed to be replaced.
diversity,the understandingof this triangularframeworkis
The works outlined here suggest that at the same essential to enable us to continue to explore the history,thetime that robotics has matured into an art form since its theory,and the creation of robotic art.
-,
introductionin the 1960s, it has been quickly appropriatedNoteand incorporated into other forms, such as performance, For their invaluable help I would like to thank Annick Bureaud,Johanna Drucker,
Duquette, George Hirose, Olga Ihnatowicz, BarbaraMoore,Jasia Reichardt,
installation, dance, earthworks,theater, and telepresence Anita
and Carl Solway.
pieces. Todayartists such as Marcel.li Antiinez Roca, Margot Apostolos, Louis-Philippe Demers and Bill Vorn, EDUARDO KAC is an artist and writer who works with
Ulrike Gabriel, Ted Krueger, Chico MacMurtrie, Ken electronic and photonic media. He is a member of the
Rinaldo, and Martin Spanjaard, among many others, are editorial board of the journal Leonardo and has exhibited his
developing a complex and fascinating body of work in work widely. He is assistant professor of art and technology at
robotic art, pushing it into new directions. Remote control, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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