The artist is completely focused, holding a black oil crayon in her hand as she repeatedly draws a small circle on a vibrant teal canvas. Unbothered by the three people closely watching her every move, she doesn’t seem to register my entry into this bright white room in the National Gallery of Victoria.
The artist is a robot; more specifically, Basia is a 30 kg “Spot” robot dog designed by Boston Dynamics. You’ve probably seen videos of these dogs opening doors, climbing stairs, and decorating Christmas trees, performing eerily fluid actions that cause people to write comments like, “I can’t wait for a pack of these to chase me through a postal mailbox.” apocalyptic world.’ urban hellscape!” The robots are designed to perform tasks that are dangerous to humans: they are often purchased by mining and construction companies, but also by police and military. You may also have seen them enforcing social distancing in Singapore, delivering food to hostages during a home invasion in Queens, dancing in a baseball stadium in Japan, or even in an episode of The Book of Boba Fett. Now you can see them painting.
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From next week, three Spots named Basia, Vanya and Bunny will begin a four-month residency at the NGV’s Triennale in Melbourne, where they will create art in their purpose-built studio. It feels like a very clinical nursery: there are docking stations where the robots ‘sleep’ and charge their batteries; Small blocks with QR codes are spread out like toys and tell the robots where they are in space.
All this is overseen by Agnieszka Pilat, favorite artist among Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists and former artist in residence at SpaceX and Boston Dynamics. For years, Pilat has both painted technique and trained technique to paint. She calls herself a techno-optimist who loves robots: she even lives with Basia and takes her on walks around her New York City neighborhood.
“You know any old cat ladies?” she says to me. “My dream is to be an old robot lady. And in fifty years I think it will be possible.”
Not everyone loves the robots as much as they do. When Pilat walks with Basia in New York, she always wears matching yellow, to warn any alarmed passersby that the robot has a human companion. “If the robot comes with a human, it’s better – a woman even more so. It takes the edge off a bit,” she says.
The fact that the police continue to buy Spots has not helped. When the New York Police Department (NYPD) sent one with cameras to a home invasion in the Bronx, and another to a hostage situation in Manhattan, there was a fierce backlash, with Spots becoming a symbol of misplaced funding priorities – the base model starts at 74,500 dollars each – fear of mass surveillance and heavy-handed policing in poor communities. “Now, robotic ground-based drones are being deployed for testing in low-income communities of color and under-resourced schools,” says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. The NYPD briefly canceled its contract with Boston Dynamics, but in April of this year they announced they would purchase two equipped Spots for $750,000.
Last year, Boston Dynamics led an open letter pledging that they would not weaponize their robots or allow individuals to do so. The lack of weapons on Basia still doesn’t quell the instinctive revulsion I feel, the suspicion that she might suddenly rush at me at any moment.
“We have this,” says Pilat, patting the knee-high barrier that surrounds the studio, “because even I don’t even touch them. It really is a safe place.”
“I know people think: the robots are comingshe says, feigning fear. “No, they’re clumsy, they look like little children!” She sees my face and adds, “My first reaction is probably no different than yours. I honestly don’t understand them very well. That’s why I have to work with engineers. But I understand that they are fascinating.”
Pilat worked with an engineer and her assistant to shape the robots’ “personalities” through a collage of AI, software and machine learning. Basia is “the serious one”, completely focused on her painting; Vanya is the ‘mother of the group’ who walks through the room observing; and Bunny is a show-off who, according to her programming, will regularly wander around to pose in a window designed specifically for selfies.
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“Art is the backdrop for selfies – that’s what it has become, right?” Pilat says bluntly. “I don’t regret it: when you go to museums, people all take selfies. But we fully embrace it. People will want to have their picture taken with the robots.”
Basia will paint approximately one canvas every three days: 36 in total, which will form a kind of robot manifesto told through 16 symbols; a primitive, pictorial language of squares, lines and circles that Pilat designed based on the physical capabilities of the robots.
“It’s almost like a kindergarten,” she says. “Basia will make mistakes.” Can they surprise her? “Not often. But sometimes they do something we didn’t expect and you get goosebumps. Of course it’s all programming, but it’s the ghost in the machine.”
Pilat is uniquely shaped by technology. Growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Łódź, Poland, she vividly remembers her first encounter with technology: seeing adults gathered around a radio in a closed room, secretly listening to Radio Free Europe. “Technology gave us hope, my parents. I really feel like technology has always been there for me,” she says. “And now that there is a lot of discomfort with technology, I feel a debt to pay back my old friend.”
Pilat moved to Silicon Valley in 2004. After studying illustration and painting, she developed a theory that just as portraiture depicted the aristocracy of the past, it should now conquer today’s elite: the machine. She approached engineers at Boston Dynamics and asked if they could paint a robot. Okay, they said, but why paint it when you can play with it?
Pilat often calls herself a “propaganda artist” for machines, a reference to her upbringing in communist Poland, where “art was all propaganda, art told you what to do.” She later admits that she is being deliberately provocative. “It’s a bit sarcastic – I’m 100% in favor of technology, which is very controversial. Of course, there are legitimate concerns about technology. But I chose to get on with it and train it. It’s my way of dealing with the problem.”
It is much easier for me to sell work that I paint myself – there is resistance to machine-made work
Agnieszka Pilat
I would point out that you added a company logo to the front of your art. “Removing the logo is a breach of contract,” she replies. “I have a non-disclosure agreement in place, so I can only reveal so much, but I am aware that I am financially dependent on a company. And I’m not [financially dependent on Boston Dynamics] because it doubts what I do. I don’t work for Boston Dynamics. I work for the robots.”
Boston Dynamics doesn’t pay Pilat to use their robots: they own Basia, rent Vanya from them and borrow Bunny from RMIT. But isn’t she wary of the good PR that comes from their $74,500 robots doing something nice like painting instead of scaring people in the Bronx?
“It is the [Boston Dynamics] engineers who want me to do this, not the marketing people or the CEOs,” she says. “I think I give the robots a softer edge. But on the other hand, I’m also a bit of a problem for them, because they don’t really need me. I come in and do crazy things with the robots.”
“I’ll tell you a secret,” she adds. “It is much easier for me to sell work that I paint myself, with my human hands, to collectors. There is resistance to machine work. But I think this work is much more important than mine.”
It is her belief that ‘crazy things with robots’ will help people gain a better understanding of our future with robotics and AI, a more complex picture than what they get from YouTube videos of robots controlled by police. “Part of the reason I like doing this is because I understand the fear,” she says. “I think we have a different relationship when you meet them. When I go for a walk with them, the people are nice. They ask questions. If they’re concerned, they’ll tell me. But when a video of me walking with Basia ends up online, people start shouting at me.”
The NGV show is a first in many ways: it is Pilat’s biggest show and it is also the first time she has left her robots to their own devices. “I will miss them,” she says. “They are celebrities – when I come with the robots it is exciting. If it’s just poor little me, it’s like I don’t even exist. No one wants to have their picture taken with me on the street.”