Originally published on the Web in Leonardo Electronic Almanac,Vol. 5, N. 5, May 1997.

ROBOTIC ART

After meeting in Helsinki in October of 1996 during theMuuMedia Festival, Eduardo Kac and Marcel.li Antunez Roca, both participantsin the robotic art show "Metamachines: Where is the Body?", atOtso Gallery, in Tapiola, and in the Art and Robotics Seminar, at the Ateneum,in Helsinki, decided to share their notes and drafted this joint statement:

Expanding the narrow definition of robots in science, engineering, andindustry, art robots make room for social criticism, personal concerns,and the free play of imagination and fantasy. Robots are objects that workin time and space. Their open and diverse spatio-temporal structures arecapable of specific responses to differing stimuli. Some of the visualforms that robotic art can take include autonomous real-space agents, biomorphicautomata, electronic prosthetics integrated with living organisms, andtelerobots (including webots).

Robots are not only objects to be perceived by the public--as is thecase with all other art forms--but are themselves capable of perceivingthe public, responding according to the possibilities of their sensors.Robots display behavior. Robotic behavior can be mimetic, synthetic, ora combination of both. Simulating physical and temporal aspects of ourexistence, robots are capable of inventing new behaviors.

One of the crucial concerns of robotic art is the nature of a robot'sbehavior: Is it autonomous, semi-autonomous, responsive, interactive, adaptive,organic, adaptable, telepresential, or otherwise?. The behavior of otheragents with which robots may interact is also key to robotic art. The interplaythat occurs between all involved in a given piece (robots, humans, etc.)defines the specific qualities of that piece.

Robots are not sculptures, paintings, or video art. Art robots are notto be confused in any way with mechanical-looking, static anthropomorphicstatues or sculptures (even those that display moving video images). Programsthat retrieve information and perform other functions on the Internet,despite being misleadingly called Internet robots, or Netbots, are notrelated to robotic art. Robotic art always involves a component of realspace.

Robots are a new art form and they are prone to be hybridized with diversetechnologies. This quality makes them transcend the category of objectto be diffused into the environment.

Robotic art can occur in physical places, in telematic space, in virtualenvironments, or any combination of these that includes an actual location.

Robots are new things in the art world. Robotic art has antecedentsin the work of artists such as Tinguely and Paik, but it constitutes acompletely unique art form in its own right, different from sculpture,video, performance, and other familiar artistic practices. Prototypes arefound in sequential machines that endlessly repeat their temporal structures.Only microprocessors allow a more complex and distinct behavior each time,be it in specific or random form. Microprocessors are as important in roboticart as brushes, paint, and canvases are in painting.

Robots belong to a new category of objects and situations disruptiveto the traditional taxonomy of art. Where one once spoke of boundaries,borders, and limits we find today new territories. These new artistic terrainsare open to new possibilities and relate to one another in productive ways.In these new heterodox terrains, hybrid creatures with no preceding modelsare born. Coupled with telecommunications media, for example, roboticsgives origin to telepresence art, in which the robot is the host of a remotesubject.

As a genre, robots do not aspire to convert themselves into closed andfixed forms. They are capable of perishing as a concept if a new situationarises to encompass and surpass them. Robots exist at a juncture of creativedebate and conceptual exploration that manifest itself in expanded telematicand cybernetic domains.

Eduardo Kac and Marcel.li Antunez Roca

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