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The Performance of Creative Machines

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Cultural Robotics (CR 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9549))

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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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Notes

  1. 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. 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. 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. 4.

    Jon McCormacks’ sonic ecosystem Eden uses a similar attention-based reward system to drive the musical performance of artificial agents [18].

  5. 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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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Creative Robotics Lab, National Institute for Experimental Arts, Faculty of Art and Design, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Petra Gemeinboeck

  2. Design Lab, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Rob Saunders

Authors
  1. Petra Gemeinboeck
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  2. Rob Saunders
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Correspondence to Petra Gemeinboeck .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Creative Robotics Lab UNSW Art & Design , Paddington, Australia

    Jeffrey T.K.V. Koh

  2. Creative Robotics Lab , Paddington, New South Wales, Australia

    Belinda J. Dunstan

  3. Creative Robotics Lab , Paddington, Australia

    David Silvera-Tawil

  4. Creative Robotics Lab , Paddington, Australia

    Mari Velonaki

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Gemeinboeck, P., Saunders, R. (2016). The Performance of Creative Machines. In: Koh, J., Dunstan, B., Silvera-Tawil, D., Velonaki, M. (eds) Cultural Robotics. CR 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9549. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42945-8_13

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

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-42944-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-42945-8

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