For our drawing class, our assignment was to look into a specific issue of our choice and represent it in the form of our choice using the tools within our disposal. I decided to use Maya and the procreate app as a digital means of achieving my intended ending format being projected.
Throughout this project I found that looking to things that inspire me on a personal level helped steer me into the direction of what exactly was something that I thought about a lot. After the first review, I found myself realising that there wasn’t something inherently missing with my project, but that it lacked motive. I decided to find the connection between my idea of a robot and a human having a conversation about the economic crisis of automation, and instead change it into what empathy is to something that is automated. Empathy is something that isn’t taken into much account when a programmer decides to execute a chain of algorithms. We are far more focused on the macabre aspects of empathy as well, “what if robots take over” “will i ever be able to make money again?”. These are all theoretical and, as time has proven, question we do not really need to worry about. It is the philosophy behind what we are creating that needs to be ironed out. Any hitch in the production of automation can lead to a very dysfunctional neural network, much like the way we raise our own children. Any dent in what could possibly lead to a child developing a serious mental illness or even just a negative ideology about the world, can lead to a disastrous and distressed state.
After realising that the economic “crisis” of automation wasn’t something I was inherently invested in, or captivated by it’s repetitive chain of events for that matter, I decided empathy was the route to go with this project. As a sort of last minute thought, I named my piece “A philosophical conversation with a robot” to add both a sense of humour and irony to the imposing conversation taking place in the piece.
The 3D rendered model built in Maya is projected on a blank white wall. Two figures are sat at a bench in front of a bus stop, waiting. It is here when the question of happiness is posed on the robot. Through a series of convoluted, and somewhat fragmented, choice of words, the robot explains that in humans, happiness is most often found when we are ignorant.
I wanted this to be the conversation of choice between the human and robot, because what is more agreeable to a human than a question about the purpose of existence? What is more selfish than asking about what the secret to happiness as though it is the most important answer in the universe? Of course the robot responds in a logical way, so logical it might not be understood by most, but definitely some. A robot is also sometimes perceived as “all-knowing”, when in reality it is just a high functioning machine that reflects our best interests. So I thought the layers of irony could be interesting to delve into for some. The longer you think about it the funnier it gets.
Mainly, I think if I could come back to this piece, I’d like to make this piece more modernly motivated. Because of the fact that automation and the economic crisis is what pushed me to pursue this project, I owe it to mention that 10 million jobs in the USA alone will be taken by automation by next year. This fact alone isn’t what pushed me alone however, the influx of information in eras has always pushed forth a sort of “enlightenment” amongst societies. When books were first created, when we could actually record our thoughts, the human species became significantly more interesting and knowledgable. This same effect is happening now, we are indulging ourselves in robotics, pushing forward a science we know little of and what the effects of can be on us as human beings. We are at endless risks, yet we push forward because it is what we do best. Robotics an neural networks will be storage for our own memories, we will be able to be more knowledgable than ever before. This is what motivated me to push forward, because the economic crisis that humans will suffer for a short period of time, will lead to a whole new set of problems we won’t even know we’ll have in the next decade alone.
Here are my prototypes:
Final appearances:
Final projected:
Materials:
