How Robots Saved an Artist's Sanity

New submitter lebijoutier writes "According to Slate, '[Patrick] Tresset, for one, discovered a novel way to stay mentally healthy with the help of drugs and still pursue what was once his life's work: He created robots that can draw portraits. Far from a mere novelty, his research is telling us more about both the creative process in humans and how we relate emotionally to machines. ... Most of us still don't have robots in the home, but for decades now, we've been waiting for machines to do our bidding. Tresset believes that it might be a good idea to imbue all personal robots with some sort of artistic skill to encourage an emotional bond — it might allow for more trust, perhaps, though you can also see how overly identifying with a machine might create some existential questions.' The article also has a fascinating video of five of his robots sketching a single human."

Comments

Puzzled Curator

[Tablizer]

"Who's this 'Skynet' artist who signs all these works we keep getting?"

Better than the Nigerian Prince portrait

[Tablizer]

My favorite work from this is called "Hacked by Chinese", followed by "BSOD" in blue pen.

doesn't compute

[HPHatecraft]

Tresset believes that it might be a good idea to imbue all personal robots with some sort of artistic skill to encourage an emotional bond

That seems like putting the cart before the horse. How about creating a robot with voice capabilities that are similar to natural speech? Or something that doesn't look and act like the killer cowboy from "Westworld"?

Any machine that can simulate possessing an emotional core creates sympathy/empathy. However, a Dreadnought a la Iron Man baking me a cake or doing water color is still a freaking Dreadnought.

Sure about the robots?

[Beerdood]

discovered a novel way to stay mentally healthy with the help of drugs

Re:Sure about the robots?

[Garridan]

With drugs, he can't work. If he can't work, he can't afford the sanity-making pills. So insane he goes. The robots keep him away from that precipice.

I know an artist with no arms

[sandytaru]

Michael Davenport lost both his hands and most of his lower arms, as well as some toes and part of one foot, when he was accidentally electrocuted as a thirteen year old. At some point he was inspired to pick up a permanent marker in his mouth and sketch that way; he draws Georgia Bulldogs (with permission from the university these days - who would deny a license to a dude with no arms?) and sells them to alumni, thus making a pretty decent living. I have one of his marker sketches in my kitchen. On dry days, you can find him in downtown Athens, marker in mouth, working on a canvas. He also does commissions and wall murals for alumni for their "Georgia rooms" - charging upwards of a thousand dollars for a large wall mural. (He can also do stuff besides red and black bulldogs - I once saw him do a commission for the Georgia Theater in full color.)

As for TFA, seems like the guy has no creative urges when he's on meds. I'm glad he found a different way to express himself.

Re:Most of us still don't have robots in the home

[_anomaly_]

Um, you have a very loose definition of robots. Electronics programmed to do certain things under certain predefined conditions, without any need to adapt or handle conditions that are not predefined, are rarely considered robots.