Robot dog with Elon Musk’s head poops out AI generated art
Robot dogs are already a little scary. But apply a hyperrealistic image of a tech billionaire’s face and ask him to literally create an AI-generated work of art and you end up with something that would Black mirror the producers shudder.
That’s exactly what’s on display at Art Basel Miami, one of the most prodigious art fairs in the world. In Regular animalsthe event space is filled with six skin-toned robotic dogs, each wearing a detached, photorealistic head of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso or the installation’s creator, digital artist Beeple. Every few moments, the dogs stop, lean back on their hind legs and pinch a Polaroid-like print on their rear ends. A small LED screen on each dog’s back flashes “POOP MODE” while this artistic performance occurs.
“What if looking at art was no longer a one-way encounter, but part of a feedback loop in which the work of art observes us, learns, and remembers us in return? Beeple said in an artist statement accompanying the installation.
Each of the human-dog hybrids has cameras located around its head, constantly capturing photos of the surrounding environment. This data is used (presumably using an AI image generator) to create the prints that dogs “poop”. Much like the AI-generated garbage flooding the internet, these digital creations are voluminous. The New York Post reports that the bots will collectively produce 1,028 impressions over the course of the exhibition, of which 256 are verifiable NFTs (non-fungible tokens) that can be listed on cryptocurrency markets. Each image is labeled “Feces Sample.” Unlike the daily sample of an actual dog, these will likely increase in monetary value over time.
But even if the final products are suitably crappyno two photos are the same. The stacks of prints each carry an aesthetic that reflects the personality of the human head attached to the dog. Picasso’s images look geometric, while those pushed out of Zuckerberg’s dog’s rectum look like a clip from a low-budget movie. Matrix counterfeit. Other examples of prints, which Beeple calls “memorabilia,” can be seen on the installation website.
“Beyond the disturbance”
Each robot dog inspired by an artist or a billionaire has its own “temperament”. For example, Elon Musk’s is described as a “cognitive plane”, while Picasso’s is “proto-cubism”. (Beeple’s dog, for what it’s worth, has a “dystopian futurism” temperament). Each also has its own speed setting: slow, medium or fast. Not surprisingly, tech billionaires all fall into the fast category.
This dystopian fever dream is the brainchild of Mike Winkelmann, (aka Beeple), an artist best known for his strange NFT images created at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. He gained mainstream attention in 2021 after a collection of 5,000 of his images sold for $69.3 million at Christie’s in its first-ever NFT auction.
Beyond fueling nightmares, Beeple says the main goal of this robot-dog project is to draw attention to the fact that more and more of the observable world consists of innocuous design, created to realize the vision of a select handful of techno-billionaires. This, he says, contrasts with past eras, when artists played a more important role in shaping reality.
“Before, we saw the world interpreted through the eyes of artists, but now Mark Zuckerberg and Elon, in particular, control much of how we see the world,” Beeple said. The New York Post. “We see the world through their eyes because they control these very powerful algorithms that decide what we see. »
Reactions to the installation, at least so far, seem decidedly less intellectual. Online commenters called the event “terrifying,” “absurd” and “beyond disturbing.”
Conversely, one Instagram user said they “want one,” referring to the dog-human hybrid. Apparently, they are not alone. THE Job notes that all of the robots on display have already been sold, for $100,000 each. Although it’s unclear who the dogs’ new owners are, many Silicon Valley titans and deep-pocketed artists attended Art Basel.
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