Robot Essay could be seen as both a record and a hypothesis about the dreams shared by the machine and the human race in the artistic practices since the modern period. What constituted the ideal view of the world that the Futurists had about a century ago has become our reality with androids, robots, and digital networks. The wonder of speed and the infinite expandable potential of the machine, both of which was admired by them, did not languish in the imaginative minds of those artists. They were used in criticizing the times and further developed together with the times while proposing novel futuristic mindsets.
Today we live together with machines. The growth of technology has been increasingly blurring the boundary between the mechanical and the human and solidifying the coexistence between mankind and machinery. Such coexistence arouses both hope and fear in us. The idealization of technology cause abnormalities in our lives and at the same time forges certain possibilities transcending what humans and technologies are capable of. It is difficult to deny the presence of artists in such processes.
The eight artists participating in this exhibition tells the manifold stories about the mechanical, robotics, and the appearance of future society. In looking into the relationship between the human race and the machine, some give direct and dynamic visual form to the outcomes of their aesthetic inquiries into robotics, and others explore humans’ dreams and fears about machines and robots through the mediums of image and text. There are also some endeavors to lampoon the adverse effects of machines with an uncanny sense of humor.
That robots are increasingly becoming like humans, may be due to human desires to render the human in yet another from. At the extreme ends of the spectrum of technological prescience, stand the mechanical human and the human machine, and what is it that the distress caused by the oscillation between the two extremities entails? The questions like this raised in this exhibition allow one to look into the hopes, desires and fears of humans projected onto the technological objects of machines from an extended range of perspectives.
Exhibition Related Events
MMCA Film and Video Guy Maddin_A Ruthless Dream
-Period: July 15th(Wed) to August 30th(Sun)
-Venue: MMCA Film&Video Theatre
Education Program
〈Robot Essay〉Workshop for children &families
-Period: May 16th(Sat) 10:00~11:30, 14:00~15:30
-Venue: Education Center, Lecture Room
-Program: Exploring Robots’ viewpoints with artists
〈Robot Essay〉Curator Talk
- Period: May 30th(Sat), 14:00~15:00
- Venue: Gallery 7
- Program: Curator talk, Touring exhibition
〈Robot Essay〉Artist Talk
-Period: July 18th(Sat), 14:00~15:30
-Venue: DAL(Digital Archive Lounge)
-Program: Artist talk and Q&A session
Guided Tours
- Period: Tue~Sun 15:00
- Venue: Gallery 7
- Program: Exhibition highlights and interpretation
* Schedule may change according to the museum circumstances.
