Patrick Tresset is a scientist/engineer/artist who built a robot who can draw portraits. In this day an age, we’ve come to a point where something like that isn’t all that surprising. Cute. A robot who can draw…
The interesting part, however, is that he deliberately programmed the robot to draw kind of clumsy. Why? In an interview with Co.Design he explains:
"I try to make robotic installations that touch people. I believe that a robot that slightly fails is more interesting, more touching -- it encourages empathy in the viewer."
Isn’t it strange, that the closer we seem to get to some kind of “perfection” (being able to build ever more precise machines, for example), the more we seem to cling onto this notion that imperfect somehow stands for “more human” and is therefor desirable? “Old” technologies, like letterpress printing or vinyl records are ever more popular. A cinema that doesn’t use digital projectors but relies on actual human beings in the projectionist booth, seems like a place where you would like to go an watch an old detective movie, on a mild summer evening, after a walk alongside the river, no?
Hey, I’m not saying this is silly. I’m just as susceptible to all this as anyone.
We’re all bloody Romantics, that’s what we are…
Now let’s watch a robot draw a portrait.
More Info here at the Aikon Project.
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