Portrait of Humanoid, 2018

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In 2008, I was chosen for a three-month artist residence program in the town of Aomori, Japan, at the ACAC Museum designed by Tadao Ando. There I became familiar with Japan’s magnificent culture, and explored how Japanese culture expressed itself in the portrayal of humanoids on pages and screens. When I saw the robot ASIMO at the Miraikan, the National Museum for Emerging Science an Innovation, I was truly stunned that a 

robot could provoke such powerful emotions. When the show was over and the robot moved backed into the case that houses it, without so much as blinking an electronic eye, the small observation window closing shut, I couldn’t help but feel compassion for that somewhat intelligent being. I stared at the robot for several minutes, waiting for a gesture of rebellion, some vital sign of freedom, to no avail. Technology really creates affection. We have come a long way from the time when we viewed robots as anti- human, a debased version of mankind, fearing that technology might rob us of our emotions. Today robots seem more humane than humans. They are increasingly being built to keep humans company and show them empathy.

We look at ourselves reflected in technology, searching for some trace of our human nature. Nowadays, technological know-how and human knowledge travel along the same path. The more we learn about the way our brain works, the more its functions are reproduced in technology and vice versa. These humanoid robots thus possess their own individual skills, their own personalities and their own stories. Once I had returned to Italy, I went to Genoa to visit the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), so that I could make the first artistic portrait of Italy’s first humanoid robot, iCub. The android iCub was designed to imitate human development. During the early stages of its life, iCub crawled around on the floor. Now that iCub is several years old, he can play ball games and is learning to use its hands. I wanted to insert iCub into a visual framework borrowed from tradition of classical portraits. In the work Humanoid Portrait (iCUB), pictured above, the iCub is portrayed in the company of a domestic animal, a dog, in order to replicate the way painters from earlier eras portrayed wealthy children in the company of pets and other animals. What I wanted to achieve was a contemporary portrait of a robot with human dignity

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Sarah Ciracì (2019) from:  Art as a Generator of New Mental Patterns. A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth
 

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Dowload the PDF full thesis 

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ENGLISH

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Download the PDF critical text by Camilla Pignatti Morano

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ITALIANO / ENGLISH