Art comes in many forms. You have the old school art like sculpture, graffiti, drawing, calligraphy and such, and modern abstract art, like abstract painting using the good’ol pair of hands, or even snails, and then there is an abstract art painting where the artist is the brush and the thing that wields him around the canvas is a robotic arm. Such is what Serbian artist Dragan Ilic has done. In his work entitled RobotAction A1 D1 (2015), Dragan straps himself on a robotic arm while he hold on to a contraption loaded with multiple brushes.
The robot, which is said to be previously used in a factory, then goes on a pre-programmed routine, resulting in an art produced by human but manipulated by a robot. According to the artist this performance art shows how art is no longer a human-only thing and the entire simulation aims to suggest “the repetitiveness involved in technological production, as well as representing a new stage of ritual or transgressive experiences of the author himself.”
Dragan’s performative act embodies a more profound meaning. By turning himself into a brush and on a machine which he has no control over, Dragan is also putting himself at risk in which any malfunction of the machine could result catastrophic, causing harm to the artist, or even taking his life. Therein also reiterates the danger of human’s reliance on machine. The notion and context pushes by the artist is truly profound, but for us, we are just mesmerized by work of art created by machine and man.
Image: screengrab from YouTube video.
Source and GIF via Sploid
