Agnieszka Pilat

PROJECT
The relationship between humans and machines is now almost symbiotic. Machines rely on humans to build, program and operate them and we rely on machines to keep our technology-dependant society running smoothly. The more autonomous machines become, they are also potentially more useful, but the question of just how independent, or human-like we want machines remains unanswered. Beyond their utilitarian function, how would we feel if machines could show care for us? Would we care more for them?

Heterobota tests our threshold for machines to exist outside of servitude and develop their own creative pursuits. Here, audiences are invited into the home of four-legged robots – Basia Spot, Omuzana Spot and Bunny Spot – to observe and interact with them as they go about their daily routines. Playing, resting and painting in their studio, the robots make their own artworks and their behaviours and creative capacity seemingly echoes our own.

While futuristic for our current time, the artwork produced by the robots represents a basic stage of machine-made painting. As the first paintings made semi-autonomously by robots, the shapes, patterns and mistakes they make reflect this moment in technological history. As artificial intelligence and robotics continue to accelerate and converge could it be possible that a future race of sentient robots look back at these paintings as the ‘neolithic artefacts’ of their distant forebears?

ABOUT
Agnieszka Pilat lives and works in New York City and San Francisco, and as a self-proclaimed machine chaser, she commutes between the east and west coasts in pursuit of emergent technologies. Pilat’s work has been featured in publications including WIRED, Artnet, New York Magazine and The Times, London. Pilat is currently a guest artist at Agility Robotics and at SpaceX.

Commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Supported by the Joe White Bequest. Courtesy of the artist.

Research Partner RMIT Health Transformation Lab

Proudly supported by Major Partner Telstra