The Machine as Artist as Myth

Andreas Broeckmann

doi:10.3390/arts8010025

Abstract

The essay proposes an art–historical contextualisation of the notion of the “machine as artist”. It argues that the art–theoretical tropes raised by current speculations on artworks created by autonomous technical systems have been inherent to debates on modern and postmodern art throughout the 20th century. Moreover, the author suggests that the notion of the machine derives from a mythological narrative in which humans and technical systems are rigidly figured as both proximate and antagonistic. The essay develops a critical perspective onto this ideological formation and elucidates its critique in a discussion of a recent series of artworks and a text by US American artist Trevor Paglen.

Highlights

The essay proposes an art–historical contextualisation of the notion of the “machine as artist”
How does the graphic and emotional intensity of these hurried sketches relate to art-making by machines? Quite pragmatically, consider the immense effort that goes into making such machine artworks as “The Rembrandt”—the research, interdisciplinary deliberations, decision making, programming, accumulation and preparing of training data, bug-fixing, 2D and 3D printing—as against the overwhelming result of a small, unobtrusive, and meaningful gesture that humans, after so many “deaths of art”, continue to make for themselves, and for others
When a person beholds the loom and says, “ah, a machine”, he or she calls up the myth of the machine and at once, its particular narrative framing comes into play, its blueprint, its construction, its degrees of freedom, and the inherent threat

Summary

The Myth of the Artist

The notion of the “machine as artists” provokes a reflection on what is “an artist”, and on the notion of “the machine”. As in the cases of Duchamp’s Readymades and Warhol’s Brillo Boxes and Sturtevant’s repetitions, it is unlikely that “machine artworks” will end or destroy art Rather, they may contribute to the continuous transformation of sense-making that we tend to categorise as “art”. In addition to such conceptual challenges to art, I keep thinking of the drawings by Joseph Beuys (as an example of personal relevance—we can think of others), feeble, sketch-like renditions of rudimentary, existential things, or beings These drawings are both extremely humble and they are monumental documents of a search for relations and connections with the world, with fellow humans, with animals, the Earth. How does the graphic and emotional intensity of these hurried sketches relate to art-making by machines? Quite pragmatically, consider the immense effort that goes into making such machine artworks as “The Rembrandt”—the research, interdisciplinary deliberations, decision making, programming, accumulation and preparing of training data, bug-fixing, 2D and 3D printing—as against the overwhelming result of a small, unobtrusive, and meaningful gesture that humans, after so many “deaths of art”, continue to make for themselves, and for others

The Myth of the Machine

Images of the Automatic

Conclusion