Week 3: Robotics and Art

April 22, 2017

Industrialization has had a tremendous impact on our life, and in particular, it has influenced art to a great extent. For one thing, as noted by Benjamin, “Mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.” Originally, art was used in service for rituals. But with advent of industrialization when mechanical reproduction of arts were available, the real value of art shifted. Art became on longer intended for cult only, but also for reproducibility. Benjamin illustrated this point by saying “instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice----politics”. For another thing, new forms of art such as movies changed people’s reaction toward art. Compared with painting, which requires contemplation to appreciate the true essence, movies do not allow such contemplation by rapid shifts of scenes. Benjamin called such reaction as a progressive one, characterized by direct and intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment. The individual reactions in this case will be affected even predominated by the reactions of the mass.

Abstract painting

Industrialization surely has brought us conveniences such as the invention of robotics as discussed in lecture. But at the same time certain problems will emerge. Overreliance on technology can obsolete our mind and deprive our ability to discover the most fundamental aspects of the world. As we can see from Linda Weintraub, intimate experiences with nature can sometimes lead to most genuine inspirations. Such delicate aspects of life are less likely to be discovered through technology. On the other hand, the advancement of technology certainly makes the society more rational, but it may also lead to loss of humanity. As in the movie “I, Robot”, the robot chose not to save a girl in a car accident because the likelihood she would survive was fairly low. Even though this may be the right thing to do from a rational point of view, it is certainly not acceptable from a humane perspective. And in lecture, we see that workers in a streamline production were treated as machines, which was also not humane. So overall, industrialization has enabled us to explore the future, but we need to be careful about the side effects it carries.