Resumen de la ponencia

Autonomous machines can produce a new kind of abstract art detached from any relation with the real world or, in opposition, from its deconstruction as a mean to achieve nonobjective representation. Additionally this new kink of abstraction is nonhuman in essence, as once the human operator triggers the process he loses control on the outcome. The absence of conscience, external control or predetermination, allow artistic robots to engender creativity in its pure state, without any representational, aesthetic or moral flavor.
If abstract art is to be produced by mechanical devices, the main point to be addressed is that no teleological setting can be assigned to such an application, given its constitutive purposeless characteristic. When collective robotics is thought as an artistic medium, no “utility” or “objective” function should be considered.
The new kind of abstraction produced by autonomous robots based on emergent properties is natural in essence, i.e., it exists.

Información acerca del ponente

Leonel Moura is a European artist born in Lisbon, Portugal, that works with AI and robotics. He created in 2003 his first swarm of ‘Painting Robots’, able to produce original artworks based on emergent behavior. Since then he has produced several artbots, each time more autonomous and sophisticated. RAP (Robotic Action Painter), 2006, created for a permanent exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, is able to generate highly creative and original art works, to decide when the work is ready and to sign it, which it does with a distinctive signature. ISU (The Poet Robot), 2006, generates random poems, very much in the style of the Lettrist Movement and of Concrete Poetry.
In 2007 the Robotarium, the first zoo dedicated to robots and artificial life, opened in Alverca.
In 2009 he curates the show “INSIDE [art and science].
Leonel Moura has been appointed European Ambassador for Creativity and Innovation (2009).