Cultural history of robots

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Robots have been a common topic, especially in science fiction , since the 20th century . While the idea of ​​artificially created humans can already be found in antiquity, with the increasing advances in robotics, the technically realized machine man became more explosive. In art, the relationship between man and machine is often explored using robots.

Robots in literature

Isaac Asimov 1965

Man-made artificial beings have a long tradition in literature, well-known examples are the golem created by magic or alchemically created homunculi . A robot-like jointed doll mistaken for the daughter of Emperor Maurikios by the Iranian court is mentioned in the Persian epic Schahname by the poet Firdausi . The idea of ​​robots in the sense of machine people or autonomous machine beings, which are realized through human science and technology, has only developed in modern times . In the literature of the 18th century , deceptively human-like “automatons” are described, which are brought to (seemingly) life by an artful mechanism (see also: History of automata ). In Die Automate (1819), ETA Hoffmann tells of a mechanical oracle that is based on the so-called Chess Turks . In the dime books of the late 19th century, for example, there is the fiction of a steam-powered machine man ( The Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward S. Ellis, 1868). Since the word "robot" has not yet been naturalized for artificial humans, such figures even as a "machine" or "mechanical man" (English be mechanical man ), respectively. In 1886 the writer Auguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam published the novel L 'Eve future (Eng. The Eve of the future or Edison's wife of the future ), in which a female automaton is supposed to serve as the companion of a noble lord.

For the first time the term "robot" coined by Josef Čapek was used by Karel Čapek in 1921 in the drama RUR . The results presented in the play Roboti are works of people on the basis of synthetic protoplasm , but the name was soon transferred to the contemporary idea of mechanically engineered machines. The term robot became known to a larger audience through the stories of Isaac Asimov . In 1942, in Runaround , he first described the three robot laws , which are still widely used in science fiction literature today. In 1950 he published Ich, der Robot, a collection of short stories on this topic. Isaac Asimov believed in progress and saw in the robot mostly an assistant in everyday tasks and an assistant who supports people in populating the universe, for example in his short stories Reason ( Reason , 1941) and Runaround (1942).

Jack Williamson described After World's End ( Beyond Space and Time ) in 1939, a humanoid robot that vigorously turns against humanity. Jack Williamson then began The Humanoids or With Folded Hands in 1947 and Wing 4 in 1952, a series of novels about humanoid robots that do their job of serving and protecting people a little too thoroughly, which the Severely restricts people's freedom.

In 1953, Philip K. Dick described in his short story Second Variety ( variant two , filmed as Screamers ) non-humanoid and humanoid killer robots, and in 1955 in his short story Autofac ( autofab or war of automatons ) an independent development of raw materials undesirable by humans competing robot factories to nano robots .

The Polish author Stanisław Lem published the narrative cycle Kyberiade from the 1950s . The main characters are Klapauzius and Trurl , two human-like, thinking and sensitive robotic beings who are themselves constructors of machines and who exist in a world that is predominantly populated by robots.

Robot figures have also found their way into children's literature. In 1967 the book Robbi, Tobbi and the Fliewatüüt was published, in which the robot ROB 344-66 / IIIa and the inventor Tobias Findteisen have shared adventures. In 1974, Ellis Kaut published the children's book Schlupp vom Grüne Stern about a small robot from the planet Balda 7/3, which undesirably develops a soul and feelings and is therefore supposed to be shot onto a garbage planet, but instead ends up on earth. The Augsburger Puppenkiste filmed Schlupp as a puppet piece in 1986 .

In the May 2019 novel Machines Like Me by the British writer Ian McEwan , published by Diogenes Verlag , young lovers enter into a tricky love triangle with an android named Adam. In the novel Die Nacht was pale, the lights were blinking by author Emma Braslavsky , which was published by Suhrkamp Verlag in August 2019 , a robotics company sells human-like robots as artificial life partners in order to combat civilizational problems such as social loneliness and lack of relationships.

Robots in movies

The short film Gugusse et l'Automate by film pioneer Georges Méliès , made in 1897, probably showed a robot on the big screen for the first time. The film, now lost, was about an argument between the clown Gugusse and an "automaton". In 1911 the ten-minute short film The Automatic Motorist by Walter R. Booth , in which a robot chauffeur appears. Another early example of the appearance of a robot can be found in the episode film The Master Mystery with circus artist Harry Houdini , which appeared in 1919 . The Italian film L'uomo meccanico by André Deed , released in 1921, is about crooks who take control of a remote-controlled robot in order to use it to commit crimes. One of the best-known robots of the silent film era is the female machine man in Fritz Lang's Metropolis from 1927. The first robot to appear on television was I Tobor in the science fiction series Captain Video and His Video Rangers (from 1949).

Well-known robot characters from the 1950s are the gigantic guardian Gort from the film The Day on which the Earth Stood Still (1951) and the robot Robby from Alarm in Space (1956). Robby was seen in a number of films and TV shows in the following years , and also served as a model for many toy robots. The Star Wars saga (1977–2005) shows robots in a comedic role with R2D2 and C3PO . The two figures are also characteristic examples of different types of robots: while the “protocol droid” C3PO is a humanoid robot , R2D2 is an “astromech droid” without human-like appearance. In the series Star Trek - The Next Generation (1987-1994) the android Data is a commanding officer who often grapples with the question of his own human resemblance. Lives in number 5! a military robot develops a naive personality. Films such as Terminator and I, Robot offer other well-known examples of the representation of androids and humanoid robots, who oppose humans in a hostile manner or stand by their side.

Industrial robots (non-humanoid robots) are also finding their way onto the screen. In films like James Bond 007 - Die Another Day , Thunderbirds , Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life and sacrilege were KUKA -Industrieroboter staged. The documentary Plug & Pray addresses the effects of the increasing use of robots on people's self-image. He introduces robots like the Japanese Geminoid by Hiroshi Ishiguro , the Italian ICub or the German MuCar-3.

The 2012 feature film Robot & Frank , directed by Jake Schreier , tells of the friendship that has developed between an elderly person with dementia and a care robot.

Robots in the film (selection)

A false mary in the Science Museum, London

Robots in the fine arts

Probably the most prominent example of the use of the robot in the visual arts is the group of the “Family of Robots” by the Korean video artist Nam June Paik . As early as 1964, Paik, together with the Japanese engineer Shuya Abe, developed the robot "K456", which from then on was to represent Paik in performances - until K456 was involved in the "first accident of the 21st century". The "Family of Robots" was created in the 1980s, initially with "Mother" and "Father" (1983/86), which were expanded to include a number of characters ("Aunt", "Uncle"). These were primarily characters from history or literary fiction, such as Albert Einstein , Attila or Edgar Allan Poe , but also friends of Paik: John Cage , Merce Cunningham or Joseph Beuys . 

SHIFZ is the abbreviated name of the Austrian artists' association Syntharturalistic Art Association. It was founded in 1996 and mainly focuses on the relationship between man and machine.

The art groups monochrom and Shifz organize events that artistically deal with robot technology. Together they organize Roboexotica , the festival for cocktail robotics.

monochrom organizes the Arse Elektronika festival , which focuses on the creative use of sex and technology, and presents artistic sex robots there.

The Japanese illustrator Hajime Sorayama draws female, shiny chrome robots in lascivious to erotic poses. For example, the American rock band Aerosmith chose a drawing by Hajime Sorayama as the album cover for their 2001 album Just Push Play . For their records Sign in please (1984) and That's the Stuff (1985), the glam metal band Autograph used motifs drawn by Sorayama.

The work of the Swiss painter HR Giger , famous for his film design for Ridley Scott's Alien , is dominated by the concept of biomechanoids he coined , a fusion of technology and mechanics with the creature as well as the influences of fantastic realism .

From June 12 to July 6 2019, the The Barn Gallery presented the St. John's College of Oxford University , entitled Unsecured futures various drawings and paintings of the female robot Ai-Da out. The humanoid robot (drawing robot artist) with the face of a woman was developed by gallery owner Aidan Meller, supported by a team of computer scientists, robotics experts and designers. Ai-Da draws with chalk and paints in acrylic.

Robots in music

Humanoid robot playing the trumpet

The German electronic music band Kraftwerk reached number 18 in the German charts in 1978 with their single "Die Roboter" from the album Die Mensch-Maschine . For their stage show, the musicians had special remote-controlled robots developed, which were provided with the faces of the band members made of plastic.

In 1983 the song Mr. Roboto by the band Styx came in at number 8 in Germany and number 3 in the charts in the USA. It's about a prison that is guarded by robots.

Robots making music and dancing, under the direction of a mad scientist , can be seen in the video clip for the 1984 piece " Zoolook " by French musician Jean-Michel Jarre .

In Herbie Hancock's video clip for his electronic instrumental piece Rockit from 1983, robot legs dance without a trunk, mechanical dolls gather around a breakfast table and a humanoid creature twitches restlessly under a blanket. Directed by the duo Godley & Creme , the dolls and robots were designed by the artist Jim Whiting , who enjoyed great success with his machine theater Unnatural Bodies from 1988 onwards. The instrumental piece Rockit can be found on Hancock's album Future Shock .

The dance project Das Modul published the single Robby Robot in 1996 about a lonely robot longing for love (text: “He is looking for a robot bride with silver-gray eyes to kiss and touch and tinker with” ).

The Three Sirens, a self learning robotic rock band, by Nicolas Anatol Baginsky.

Rock band Radiohead released a song called Paranoid Android in 1997 .

On their 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots , the alternative rock band The Flaming Lips sings about a girl with a black belt in karate who fights against evil robots. In the song One More Robot / Sympathy 3000-21 , on the other hand, the Flaming Lips tell of a robot that learns to live, feel and love.

In the 2004 song Coin-operated boy by the Dresden Dolls , for which there is a video clip, Amanda Palmer sings about a mechanical doll boy made of elastic plastic who comes to life by inserting a coin and with whom the singer falls in love.

The musician Alec Empire released the techno piece Robot LOVE on the album The Golden Foretaste of Heaven in 2008 , which contains the vocal line She's a machine trapped in a woman's body .

In the video clip for the song All Is Full of Love by the Icelandic singer Björk from 1999, two kissing white robots act, singing about love, trust and origin. Director Chris Cunningham directed the video clip, which won two MTV Video Music Awards and received a Grammy nomination.

The song Fancy Robots comes from the Australian singer Justine Electra .

In the finale of the eighth season of the TV casting show Germany's Next Topmodel in June 2013 by TV station ProSieben , the participants had to walk the catwalk as elegantly as possible in a discipline with the robot Titan the Robot , to the pop song Girl Like Me by Ladyhawke .

The cover of the 2015 album Genexus by the American industrial metal band Fear Factory shows the open torso of a robot. In addition, the lyrics of the songs on it deal conceptually with the topic of robots as self-sufficient and life-negating machine beings, for example in the first piece Autonom Combat System , with a pessimistic worldview comparable in content to the dark plot of the science fiction film series Terminator .

As a robot band performing in a futuristic bar, UK-based female indie rock group Dream Wife is featured in the animated video clip of their song Hey Heartbreaker , released in January 2018.

For the opening of Hi Robot! - The Mensch-Maschine-Festival on March 13, 2019, conducted a humanoid robot named Alter 3 as part of the world premiere of the work Scary Beauty - Android Opera by the composer Keiichiro Shibuya, the Japanese Philharmonic in the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf.

In the video clip for her song 365 , a collaboration with German-Russian electro-pop DJ Zedd from 2019, pop singer Katy Perry plays a female humanoid robot who begins to develop human emotions. In the video clip for the song Free Yourself of the Chemical Brothers swinging with the hip and air guitar playing robot in a warehouse dance of the 2018th

The hard rock band Compressorhead is made up entirely of robots and was presented at the Frankfurt Music Fair in April 2013 .

The Austrian pop band Wanda released a video clip for their song Going Home in August 2019 , in which a little robot named No. 6 plays the leading role next to the band, as an obvious homage to the visually similar robot Johnny 5 lives in the feature film No. 5! from 1986.

In September 2019, two white humanoid robots that can perform lascivious hip movements danced in the strip bar SC Club in the French city of Nantes , as an installation by British artist Giles Walker, for a month on the pole, doing a pole dance . The two dancing robots are called humanoid girls and consist of parts of cars and mannequins.

Robots in the theater

In October 2018, the writer Thomas Melle will stage the play Unheimliches Tal / Uncanny Valley at the Münchner Kammerspiele , in collaboration with Stefan Kaegi from the Rimini Protokoll theater group , in which the author interacts with a robot sitting on the stage, a mechanical replica of himself , talks about existential issues.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Volkmar Enderlein , Werner Sundermann : Schāhnāme. The Persian Book of Kings. Miniatures and texts from the Berlin manuscript from 1605. Gustav Kiepenheuer, Leipzig / Weimar 1988, new printing Müller & Kiepenheuer, Hanau. ISBN 3-7833-8815-5 , pp. 198 f.
  2. ↑ Peter Gendolla: The living machines. On the history of the machine people at Jean Paul, ETA Hoffmann and Villiers de l'Isle Adam. Marburg / Lahn 1980 (= Metro series. Social science texts, 10)
  3. ^ Robert Malone: ​​Robots. From tin toys to terminators. London 2004, p. 10.
  4. ↑ Radio play: The Eve of the Future by NDR editor Michael Becker on www.ndr.de ( Norddeutscher Rundfunk ), June 26, 2019
  5. ↑ Runaround in the English language Wikipedia
  6. ↑ both contained in Ich, der Robot . Reason has also been published under the title Logic in other German-language anthologies
  7. ↑ gugusse Et L'Automate: The First Movie Robot. Website for the Zedfest film festival.
  8. ^ Robert Malone: ​​Robots. From tin toys to terminators. London 2004, p. 98.
  9. ↑ Plug & Pray , documentary about the use of humanoid robots and autonomous service robots.
  10. ^ Decker, Edith (1988): Paik. Video. Cologne: DuMont.
  11. ↑ Catalog Nam June Paik (1991): video time - video space. Zurich and Basel: Kunsthaus Zurich and Kunsthalle Basel.
  12. ↑ Burke Hansen: Rise of the fucking machines: Ass Elektronika bumps uglies with Web 2.0 . Retrieved February 21, 2019.
  13. ↑ AV Flox: Eagerly We Await the Coming of the Sex Robots . Retrieved February 21, 2019.
  14. ↑ 3sat Kulturzeit , television broadcast (39 minutes) with presenter Cécile Schortmann and the robot Pepper , produced by 3sat , ZDF, ORF, SRF, ARD. Mainz , February 7, 2020
  15. ↑ http://www.the-three-sirens.info/binfo.html
  16. ↑ Music magazine Visions in the news from Online-Redaktion on www.visions.de, January 5, 2018.
  17. ^ Robot concert: The conducting Android "Age 3": A fairground attraction by Christian Oscar Gazsi Laki on www.wz.de ( Westdeutsche Zeitung ), March 14, 2019
  18. ↑ Robots dance in the Reuters agency's strip club in the news (Panorama) on the web portal www.gmx.at ( GMX ), September 3, 2019
  19. ↑ Thomas Melle's play in Munich: Stay human, says Bernd Noack's machine on www.spiegel.de, October 5, 2018