Robotic Art – The Aesthetics of Machine Communication

Robots are increasingly capable of generating emergent and aesthetic outcomes of their own. Artists are at the forefront of appropriating such emergent technologies to create new interactive paradigms. Here we argue that robotic art does not necessarily follow an optimal approach to communication. Instead, artists generate novel interfaces and novel actuation of robots that challenge the form and function and how we relate to our machines.

Invariably, the chapter permeates multiple disciplinary boundaries calling on and challenging the norms and methods of the overlapping communities. Depending on which community they belong to, the reader will notice the deeply intuitive nature of the artist being probed by the engineer or the analytical and clinical approach of the engineer being called into question by the artist. Perhaps polemical, this narrative is about finding methodological common ground in the emergent field of robotic art.