Robotic technology and conceptions of a “machine aesthetic”
“The machine was a little less than a metre in height, and half that in
width and depth. Its rounded-off rectangular casing was made of delicate
pink porcelain held in a lattice of gently glowing blue lumenstone. Beyond
the porcelain’s translucent surface, the drone’s internal components could
just be made out; shadows beneath its thin ceramic skin.”
(Iain M. Banks, Look to Windward)
In this description, of an intelligent machine in a far distant future, Iain
M. Banks evokes an aesthetic response from a number of perspectives,
including mathematical proportion, materials science and artistic form.
This machine is clearly a product of advanced technological design, but
Banks’ description supports a definition of technology that is far removed
from the purely instrumental idea that function underlies form. In science
fiction at least, it seems that machines are constructed with more artistic
licence than would be considered appropriate by a modern conception of the
“machine aesthetic”.
Using this as inspiration, my paper questions whether the same can be said
of the “state of the art” in real-life machines, the robot. This paper
therefore explores the relationship between technological and aesthetic
goals in the creation of two different real-life robots, to consider the
implications of these robots for ideas of a “machine aesthetic”. One of
these robots, AUR, is a robotic desk lamp designed by roboticist Guy Hoffman
at the Media Laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The
other, designed by artist Bill Vorn at the Hexagram Institute in Montreal,
forms part of a robotic art performance project called Grace State Machines.
While in many ways very different from one another, these robots share a
common theme in their use of light and movement as an integral part of their
interactions with their environment and with humans. It is a consideration
of these attributes of light and movement, and the aesthetic value that they
confer on the robots, which forms a particular focus of the paper.
This paper therefore acknowledges the continuing prevalence of an
instrumental perspective on the goals of technology. However, through its
consideration of robot illustrations it chooses instead to emphasise the
Greek root of “technology” in “techne”, and reinforces links between robotic
technology, the “machine aesthetic” and the broader aesthetic values
associated with the arts.
