Week 3: Robotics+Art
As I was growing up in the early 2000's, Korea underwent a reversal in its censorship of Japanese culture and started opening up to things such as Japanese cinema, games, manga and anime. Among them was the second anime reboot of Astro Boy in 2003, which became one of the shows I grew up watching along with Megaman. So looking back at all these characters, I don't think as a child I even considered them as "robots" any more than they were humans with robot-like superpowers. Rather, I think that was the point, to see how close these robots and programs could come to the human condition.
Both Astro Boy and Megaman are part of the Japanese obsession with artificial humanoids and humanoid robots that Prof. Kusahara mentions. This fascination continues well into today, where humanoid home assistants are actually a thing. Take, for example, Pepper from SoftBank:
One of Japan's most popular YouTubers, Hikakin, bought his second Pepper last month to keep his first one from three years ago company. Personally I think it's just a huge gimmick (Hikakin admits he doesn't use Pepper much anyway), but it's selling.
But Pepper and most other humanoid robots have the issue of the "uncanny valley." People find that their reception to human-like-but-not-quite things drop sharply after a threshold. The original paper by Masahiro Mori cites zombies as the lowest point. For me, Pepper's face sits at the bottom of that familiarity valley, and prosthetics are much more appealing.
To overcome the uncanny valley some efforts have entirely abandoned a physical human form.
In comparison to Pepper, another home assistant product, Gatebox, opts for an entirely virtual 3D model projected as a hologram. This has multiple practical and artistic advantages to the traditional physical humanoid robot, such as compactness and the ability to change the model at will. For anime fans like Hajime here (again, one of Japan's most popular YouTubers), it's quite literally a dream come true.
The hologram method also has the advantage of being infinitely reproducible without consequence. This stands in contrast to Walter Benjamin's comments on the reproduction of art: by being perfectly and infinitely reproducible, simultaneously, in any part of the world at any given time (given the holographic projector is present), the digital form has not lost uniqueness by incorporating the reproduction itself as part of the art.
I talk more about Japan here than Korea. That's because the Korean notion of robotics parallels the industrial Western one more than not the Japanese anthropological approach. As such, my family in Korea also owns a robot. It's quite cute.
1. Kusahara, Machiko. Robotics MachikoKusahara 1. YouTube, YouTub, 14 Apr. 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQZ_sy-mdEU.
2. Kaihotsu, Hikaru, director. ２体目のペッパーくんがやってきました！. YouTube, YouTube, 2 Mar. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjfSUUIqP6Q.
3. M. Mori, K. F. MacDorman and N. Kageki, "The Uncanny Valley [From the Field]," in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 98-100, June 2012.
4. Eda, Hajime, director. アニメの女の子と一緒に生活できる装置がヤバ過ぎる。. YouTube, YouTube, 1 Mar. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlqicqhn__Y.
5. Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." 1936.
Both Astro Boy and Megaman are part of the Japanese obsession with artificial humanoids and humanoid robots that Prof. Kusahara mentions. This fascination continues well into today, where humanoid home assistants are actually a thing. Take, for example, Pepper from SoftBank:
But Pepper and most other humanoid robots have the issue of the "uncanny valley." People find that their reception to human-like-but-not-quite things drop sharply after a threshold. The original paper by Masahiro Mori cites zombies as the lowest point. For me, Pepper's face sits at the bottom of that familiarity valley, and prosthetics are much more appealing.To overcome the uncanny valley some efforts have entirely abandoned a physical human form.
In comparison to Pepper, another home assistant product, Gatebox, opts for an entirely virtual 3D model projected as a hologram. This has multiple practical and artistic advantages to the traditional physical humanoid robot, such as compactness and the ability to change the model at will. For anime fans like Hajime here (again, one of Japan's most popular YouTubers), it's quite literally a dream come true.
The hologram method also has the advantage of being infinitely reproducible without consequence. This stands in contrast to Walter Benjamin's comments on the reproduction of art: by being perfectly and infinitely reproducible, simultaneously, in any part of the world at any given time (given the holographic projector is present), the digital form has not lost uniqueness by incorporating the reproduction itself as part of the art.
I talk more about Japan here than Korea. That's because the Korean notion of robotics parallels the industrial Western one more than not the Japanese anthropological approach. As such, my family in Korea also owns a robot. It's quite cute.
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| Vacuum much strong. Vroom vroom. |
1. Kusahara, Machiko. Robotics MachikoKusahara 1. YouTube, YouTub, 14 Apr. 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQZ_sy-mdEU.
2. Kaihotsu, Hikaru, director. ２体目のペッパーくんがやってきました！. YouTube, YouTube, 2 Mar. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjfSUUIqP6Q.
3. M. Mori, K. F. MacDorman and N. Kageki, "The Uncanny Valley [From the Field]," in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 98-100, June 2012.
4. Eda, Hajime, director. アニメの女の子と一緒に生活できる装置がヤバ過ぎる。. YouTube, YouTube, 1 Mar. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlqicqhn__Y.
5. Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." 1936.
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