Desma9 assignment 3, Robotic and art

In this week’s class, professor talked about the robotic and art. More specifically, the interaction happened between robotic and art in their evolution. My interested points are about the industrialization and cyborgs.

As for industrialization, I think everyone is familiar with it because without it, our life cannot improve so much and still growing rapidly. The industrialization started in 1860's, quickly after the invention of steam engine and grew much faster following the application of electricity. Although industrialization helped to improve our society and made technology grew so rapidly, there is still critique about it. For example, Walter Benjamin claimed in his book “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, “Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to bring things “closer” spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction.”(III) By this, he thought that the mass reproduction from industrialization actually destroyed the creativity and uniqueness in art. Moreover, in Chaplin’s “Modern time”, the mass production made workers like a machine on the assembly line and even influenced their life.

                                 Industrialization in German

Chaplin's Modern Time    

Cyborg is a fashion word in many great sci-fi movies. I, Robot, in my opinion, is one of the best I have seen. In this movie, the robots finally evolve too rapidly that they want to control the human beings and found their own world. The story could be seen as a classic example of the disadvantage of industrialization that human beings made technology grow too fast due to desires and finally we cannot control them at all. Though the condition appeared in the movie is kind of ridiculous now, it might happen one day in the future.

I, Robot

To give a conclusion, I think industrialization itself has more positivity than negativity and donated greatly to the development of our society. What caused many damages is actually our desire. If we can control our desire correctly, I think we can gain more benefits and less negative effects.

Sources

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Marxists, web, http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Ian Adler, Harrison S, Industrialization in Germany & Russia, apworldquig, web, https://apworldquig.wikispaces.com/Industrialization+in+Germany+%26+Russia

Dr. Macro's High Quality Movie Scans, photography, http://www.doctormacro.com/Movie%20Summaries/M/Modern%20Times.htm

Amanda Peraza, Dystopian Fiction-I Robot, 2011. 3, photography, http://amandaaperaza.blogspot.com/2011/03/dystopian-fiction-i-robot.html

Vesna, Victoria, “Robotic and Art”, Lecture 3