Disability, Robotics & Art

There has been a lot interesting dialog around the use of automation in art. Dr Tina Rivers Ryan (https://twitter.com/TinaRiversRyan) recently raised a good discussion around Agnieska Pilats’ Robot art.

How Agnieszka Pilat Became Silicon Valley’s Favorite Artist

This post is my attempt to explain why I work with automation and hopefully explain the wider context for why I think it’s meaningful.

I would argue a lot of robotic art is bad as it is focused on fetishising technology. Promoting a form of cultural washing of the dangers of military robots and avoiding complex questions on the place of humans in labour. The robot can paint or dance, let’s focus on that rather than the real issues of robotics as a displacement of labour or armed conflict.

I approach robotics from the perspective of a disabled cyborg. My relationship with a wheelchair as a body expands my definition of where skin begins and body ends. Robotics gives me an agency that my own body does not afford. So perhaps I cannot escape the narrative of being liberated by technology, but since it is so close to being my body there is a critical awareness of any attempt to insert technological ideologies into it. The computer, the robot, the wheelchair are mine, and I will try (and often fail) to use them in the way I desire.

I use robots as a form of expression built from a lived experience of disability. Repurposing and dismantling systems (both physical and structural) that work against or exclude me. In the origins of the automative revolution and its driving economies of reducing error, time efficiency & freeing humans for higher thought there is a strong connection with how non-conforming bodies are valued under capitalism. Productivity & efficiency are your right to personhood, your body is accommodated but only as long as it is still time efficient compared to other bodies [https://alexhaagaard.medium.com/notes-on-temporal-inaccessibility-28ebcdf1b6d6]. Also the narrative of being rescued from disability by automation, in the way humans were going to be rescued from manual labour by automation takes the same technique of misdirection. Looking to band aids to fix the problem instead of examining the larger societal issues.

I see little point in trying to use machines to compete with what humans already do by hand and brush. I’m interested in the aesthetics of machines, its accuracy, precision & errors combined with the work of the human hand. The goal of using a machine is not to erase my disabled identity through enabling me to be like others, but embracing its style and restrictions and hence embracing my own identity. I feel descriptions of work not directed by human hand as “cold”, “mechanical” & “soulless art” come from an ableist perspective. It creates an exclusionary model framing what is a valid body. When machines like a wheelchair becomes a body, the movement is mechanical, but still beautiful and full of soul. The work of the machine is only cold and soulless if the user of the tool directs it to be so.

In my work the paint is placed by hand, the machine has no sensors, no awareness of the paint, surface or result. It is important that there is ambiguity in mapping between idea, code, instruction and paint. How will this pattern work in paint? How is my experience working with this physical medium influencing my digital work and my work in placing paint by hand?

Guide for Plotter motion and paint manipulation.

Motion applied to paint.

I value this unknown as it is the core of what makes code an interesting creative medium. The fuzziness in translating ideas to instructions that often do the unintended. The paint brings its own fuzziness in its unpredictable interaction with the machine. Working with physical mediums and digital mediums combines a fast & cheap digital method with a slower & more expensive hand craft.

Performance

Most robotic work including my own relies heavily on the work as a performance. Turning the digital into action in the physical world creates a spectacle manifest by technology. If we want to talk about the distraction from the real issues of robotics it probably lies here in the performance.

For the artist there is also an effect of working with Robotics, amplifying the causal pleasure of code. Their code is not just creating new digital worlds but effecting the physical one. I think this effect is even present for audiences when narratives of words are turned into physical actions.

These are both difficult issues for my work. In terms of causal pleasure, from a disability perspective I don’t think this diminishes the work. When the design of worlds limits your access and ability to cause an effect, causal pleasure is a powerful motivator for critiquing it.

From the performance perspective I don’t think it’s possible to escape the spectacle distracting and shaping views on robotics. I purposely treat the creation process as a performance, hiding this and just showing the artwork would be one way to avoid this. However my purpose for treating the robotic process as a performance comes from my creative practice driven by disability & the control of visibility. With the experience of disability I always feel “other”, the repetition of design telling me I do not belong or the simple social act of always sitting in standing spaces all contribute to a sense of not belonging. My access is presented not as a human right but a privilege that can only be earned through lengthly and expensive legal battles. Indirect performance through code, sound or robotics provides a degree of disembodiment.This allows me to control and frame the narrative of how I am seen and gain a sense of control over how much my body and medical impairment interplay in the work. Something which is out of my control in society. With disability my assistive aids are stuck in narratives of medicalisation. The painting machine is a mobility aid but it is seen in a different “creative” perspective while it provides much the same assistance.

Mobility Aid; The pen plotter.

Visibility is core to my creative practice, and is why I value the robotic process as performance, it is my way of being seen physically and creatively in a way I control.

Bad Art?

In my work I’m connecting a discipline of computational thinking, digital work, disability led process and performance work. I hope I’m not using robots badly with this approach. I’m not so sure I can escape using robots to make “bad art”, I can use the machine meaningfully for myself but as for the quality of the work produced, I think I would only feel confident it not being “bad” if others voices said so.