A couple of weeks ago, Emily, Gabi and I went to a temporary exhibit at the Grand Palais called Artists and Robots. The first room of the exhibit showed a number of line-heavy art pieces, one of which was still being done by three small robots. Each robot had different movement patterns: one that spun repetitively in a small circle, one that raced straight across the paper and one that moved in random jagged movements. While these pieces were more mechanic, there were other robots drawing softer, realistic pieces of animals and people. There was even realist painting of a waterfall scene (see below). Not only were the robots able to mimic human-like artistic style, but they were also able to create pieces unique to their abilities. After the first room, displays went beyond basic robots. Computer-generated “movies” of moving numbers, code and words produced scenes of beautiful movement, giving me the same sense of reflectiveness that I would have looking at a human-made art piece.
The most shocking pieces were at the end of the exhibit. Takashi Murakami also had a self-portrait robot on display. This robot was a very real looking, clay-like model of Murakami with multiple faces. The only thing that gave away that it was a robot rather than a sculpture, was his moving eyes. The robot appeared to make eye contact with you as you watched it. However, the robot’s outward simplicity was deceiving. On the neighboring wall, a short film was playing. The film had human actors and actresses and appeared to be like any other short film. To my shock, the film script was written by Murakami’s robot. The robot was able to process information about the human experiences and emotion he observed to autonomously create something uniquely human.
The debate on whether art is uniquely human has been ongoing for years. Some argue that only humans can produce unpredictable and truly creative pieces. Given that software developers are now trying to model technology and data processing after the human brain, I decided to look how the brain works when we are using creative thinking. Neuroscience of creativity has been a hot research topic in recent years, but no consensus on creative processes has been established (Sawyer, 2011). Most researchers agree that the front of the brain, associated with abilities considered most “deeply human”, is involved and have confirmed that with EEG, PET and fMRI scans (Sawyer, 2011). Notably, several studies have showed activity in the pre-frontal cortex during creativity-requiring tasks, such as creating a story with given words (Howard et al., 2005; Sawyer, 2011). Whether computers will ever be able to mimic the front-brain functions of humans is up for debate. From what I saw at the Artists and Robots museum, it seems like they’re getting close.
References:
Howard-Jones, P. A., Blakemore, S. J., Samuel, E. A., Summers, I. R., & Claxton, G. (2005). Semantic divergence and creative story generation: An fMRI investigation. Cognitive Brain Research, 25(1), 240-250.
Sawyer, K. (2011). The cognitive neuroscience of creativity: a critical review. Creativity research