Thursday, April 18, 2019

Week 3: Robotics + Art

Society has always had a weird relationship with the progression of technology. It is kind of the same as any generation has when they watch the world change around them and they are not sure if they should accept the change at face value. People have always been scared of technology and there is a ton of evidence of this fear with all of the movies and books written about robots taking over the world. I believe people have started to accept technology because it is an inevitable progression to our lives even though it terrifies them. Industrialization has been a constant theme for centuries because humans are constantly learning and growing and creating new things and having new ideas. That is the natural progression of life and it is hard to stop that.


Robot used for surgery

Walter Benjamin talks about how technology changes the way that we view the world and the way we interact with other people. He wrote about this in 1936, but over time his words have continued to bring light to what is going on. His comparison of magician and surgeon to painter and cameraman has only become more prevalent as more and more technology has been created. Now we have movies that are completely animated and made almost solely by a computer and we have machines that perform surgeries with the surgeons barely touching them. People might be uncomfortable by this fact and it can change the way we view the world, but it is how we have adapted and changed to the world around us.
Walter Benjamin



We are still producing the same content that we were producing before take Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse for example. People went from drawing Spiderman comics, to filming Spiderman movies, and now we are creating animations of Spiderman. Society is continuing to do the same thing it has always done, but applying its new advancements in technology to keep the content up to date with the world around it.
Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse




Sources: 

“Introducing The Da Vinici Robotic Surgical System.” Robotic Surgery | Georgetown Community Hospital, www.georgetowncommunityhospital.com/our-services/minimally-invasive-robotic-surgery.

Benjamin, Walter, and James Amery. Underwood. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Penguin Books, 2008.

Solomon, Charles. “How the 'Spider-Verse' Animators Created That Trippy Look.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 25 Dec. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/movies/spider-man-into-the-spider-verse-animation.html.

Micromagic Systems Robotics Lab, www.hexapodrobot.com/index.html.

Lipson, Hod. “Building ‘Self-Aware’ Robots.” TED, www.ted.com/talks/hod_lipson_builds_self_aware_robots.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Piper,
    Great blog! I agree with your point that people have been afraid of technology, despite having to adapt to the inevitable rise of it. Things are becoming more digital and technological advanced and while some people wish we were back to the simple days, our society has to accept the changes in order to progress. I never really put much thought into why there are many films and books that depict the destruction of humans by android technology , but your point has put it into perspective!

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  2. Hi Pip! I really liked your blog post. I think it was really cool and representative of you as a student to focus on what the human-robot relationship is and how it has evolved. It is a really weird relationship, and one that seems to involve little trust. It is also great that you included this progression in robotic industry in more than one place or way, by including the use of robots and animation in comics and movies.

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  3. Hey Piper. I agree with what you said about how there is a relationship between society and technology in that it changes the way we think and interact with each other. I like how you pulled in the comparison of the magician and surgeon to the painter and cameraman, and how our physical connect is becoming gradually separated from reality. I also liked how you linked everything to Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse.

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  4. Hey Piper, first of all I enjoyed your blog and I particularly liked how you brought up the fear the society has towards technology. This fear is something that has been played into by a vast array of movies. It all makes me ask the question, at what point do we stop developing technology? Because at the rate that we are going robots are going to quite literally rule the world.

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