Week 3 Blog
Robotics & Art
Machines, and the industrialization of machines integrated the idea of “robotics” and mechanization into society. The Imitation Game is a movie based on the story of Alan Turing and the machine that broke the German Enigma code. This is just one example of a movie influenced by industrialization and the shift in ideology towards machines. The importance of machinery in society, as well as its development and high technological abilities became central themes and topics in art and film.
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| The Imitation Game |
Mass production changed the way what we live our lives. Gutenburg’s movable metal type, to the printing press, to the modern digital book, all impacted the way scholars do research and the amount of knowledge accessible to the public, as well as the ability to share a writer’s work much more easily. This week’s lecture videos and the reading of Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” gave me a special interest in the intersection of industrialization and mass reproduction with art. I found Benjamin’s perspective interesting; before mass and mechanical reproduction, art had a specific uniqueness, and any reproduction of it could never be quite like the original, but with the development of reproductive technology and machines, art is made for the purpose of mass reproduction. Douglas Davis builds on this idea in “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction” by writing that in the modern age of digital reproduction of art, there is now zero distinction between what is original and what is not, of what is the “master copy” and what are simply “copies.”
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| The printing press revolutionized mass production. |
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| Henry Ford ran the first big-time mass production of cars, and people and businesses everywhere followed his example in all other areas of industrialization. |
Sources/Links:
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” 1936.
Davis, Douglas. “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (An Evolving Thesis: 1991-1995).” Leonardo, Vol. 28, No. 5, Third Annual New York Digital Salon. (1995), pp. 381-386.
“From Gutenberg's Movable Type to the Digital Book, and Other Studies in the History of Media.” HistoryofInformation.com,
Vesna, Victoria. “Robotics pt1” Cole UC online. Youtube, 15 April 2012. Web. 21 April 2019.
Vesna, Victoria. “Robotics pt3” Cole UC online. Youtube, 16 April 2012. Web. 21 April 2019.
Not only do we have a problem with determining what art is the original and what are the copies because of the internet, but we have that problem with everything. You cannot trust anything on the internet because it is too easy for people to lie or take credit for things. It has become too simple for people to take credit for work that is not their own and no one is there to hold them accountable.
ReplyDeleteHi Devon! I thought you did a really good job on this week's blog post. I think you did a really good job of intertwining all of the different things that robots are involved in, as well as the development of industry that we see robots in now. By giving us a good timeline of the printing press, to Ford's factories to places run completely by robots now, you show great understanding. I also liked that you mentioned the concept of a shift in ideology towards robots, that's really important too!
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