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Published in:
Cultural Robotics: Robots as Participants and Creators of Culture Read chapter Read first chapter

2016 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

The Performance of Creative Machines

Authors : Petra Gemeinboeck, Rob Saunders

Published in: Cultural Robotics

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Cybernetic and robotic agents have long played an instrumental role in the production of ‘machine creativity’ as a cultural discourse. This paper traces the cultural legacy of the performance of automata and discusses historical and contemporary works to explore machine creativity as a cultural, bodily practice. Creative machines are explored as performers, capable to expand the script they are given by their human creator and skillful in bidding for the audience’s attention.

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Footnotes
1
Interestingly, Vaucanson’s Pipe and Tabor Player (1737), advertised in the London Magazine as “outdoing all [human] Performers on the Instrument” (see London Magazine, or the Gentleman’s Intelligencer, vol. 13), performed early notions of superior, machinic agency, rather than human virtuosity.
 
2
In this paper, we often refer to creative machines, rather than creative robots. From a cultural viewpoint, the term ‘machine’ is less readily associated with humanoid forms. Creative machines, thus, open up the image of the creative robot to include more complex understandings of the machine as assemblage, always in interaction with other assemblages, including the environment, humans, the cultural context, history, etc.
 
3
Cleland argues that “[f]or a robot, [successful acting] is the ability to persuasively simulate or pass as human or alive or intelligent” [3]. Following this argument, if the aim is for a robot to appear creative, its successful performance would be to persuasively simulate creative behaviour, e.g., painting robots. As we have suggested earlier, however, a pre-programmed automaton is capable of delivering such a persuasive performance; it doesn’t require the advanced capabilities of a robot.
 
4
Jon McCormacks’ sonic ecosystem Eden uses a similar attention-based reward system to drive the musical performance of artificial agents [18].
 
5
Gordon Pask already developed an ambitious architectural machine that would reconfigure itself when it got ‘bored’ for the Fun Palace project, a collaboration with architect Cedric Price. Unfortunately the project was never realised. More details on the Fun Palace and Gordon Pask’s pioneering concept for its dynamic architectural machine can be found in [16].
 
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Metadata
Title
The Performance of Creative Machines
Authors
Petra Gemeinboeck
Rob Saunders
Copyright Year
2016
Book
Cultural Robotics

Print ISBN: 978-3-319-42944-1

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-42945-8

Copyright Year: 2016

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42945-8_13

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