Interview: Agnieszka Pilat
Conducted by Story Pennock
Pennock: In your B22 Marching Round, the ‘about the work’ section referenced Jean Tinguely as a point of conceptual inspiration. The first thing I thought of was Tinguely’s Homage to New York, which, upon further consideration, I feel is almost a prerequisite to AI- or certainly machines- as art. But from your perspective what if any connection is there between this work and your current work.
Pilat: He was an artist who was doing work with machines and I think he was one of the first that really gave machines personality and so he was using machines in a very paradoxical way. So when we think of a machine, a machine produces a output us that is very y Unoriginal but Tinguely gave each machine its own personality. So for me, I work with robotics, I also think tha t the absurd part is the sssence o the work meaning taht we both use the machine to produce original, unpredictability work.
Pennock: I feel that many artists and art lovers are concerned of AI art stymying man’s artistic innovation And perhaps taking the place of artists entirely. What are your thoughts on this?
Pilat: I think Mid Journey is the one that makes the most artists upset because it creates work that looks really like art. I understand that artists are upset and that they’re feeling violated, but I think artist who will not embrace the new technology will fall behind. Think of the impressionists with paint tubes, back then I would imagine that there was a similar backlash “Wow youre not making your own paint? I see” So i think its just a tool that we really have to embrace. Artists used to be chemists, creating their own paint, and now they buy pre-made paint. Change always scares people and people are terrified; they dont know where to find themselves. And becauase artists are usually early adapters, artists can kind of play an experiment with it. I think it also reflects our human narcissistic personality that this is a very special moment and that nothing has really happened like that before.There has always been progression and innovation like the ones happening in the art world with AI, this is no different from the lightbulb.
AI makes art very accessible, easy to make, very democratic, and very massed produced. Mass produced objects dont have a lot of value, so I think art massed produced by AI won’t jump the cache ahead human artists. In addition, AI will make artists more innovative, compelling them to come up with different approaches to telling the story. An example historically would be photography: artists had to think what it was to be a realist painter but some artists like Jackson Polluck went a different direction because he felt there was no more value in just imitating visual nature as we see it.
There is a great theorist of media, Marshall MacCalouhan, who said that when the new media comes around - like AI - all you can see are people worrying that it was coming in to replace information media. Like how people thought the advent of TV was replacing the theater. Right now we are are very shaken up that AI is replacing the work of artists but because its such early stages it will develop its own.
I like saying that robots and AI are in infancy because the way they create work is very infantile.
Pennock: Speaking of your robots, could you expand upon how you use them?
Pilat: Spot can pull off something from the internet and make something from the Dall E makes its own interpretation out towards the canvas, I didn’t enjoy that all that much becase I like to see the robot as an extension of myself. As for Digit, every move the robot makes I have to pre-program the dance. I find it quite limiting towards how my work comes out but on the other hand its AI language, which I enjoy.
Pennock: Would you say art produced by your robots in that show is more your art or can they claim ownership?
Pilat: So the show was a combination of my work with Boston Dynamic robots for a year and I had two robots and one has the atattatchment the arm and one doesnt.
Because Spot was the most advanced robot I used the walk around and round circles. What I’ve been doing all year just figuring out the Visual Language for the robot with he arm because there are only certain ways I can work with it, due to how the arm is built. Which created very confined language, so everything you see is my relationship and learning how to work with the robots so it’s again school both for me and for spot!
Similar to ROBOTa, Renaissance 2.0 was a commentary about how now is the renaissance moment. In the original renaissance, then there was a big concentration of artists and scholars in one region in Italy and the same thing is happening right now in silicone valley.
Masters had students always so that’s kind of how I thought about the robots.
Pennock: Judging by the amount of mentions of Marcel Duchamp and Jean Tinguely in the ‘about the work’ sections of your art pieces, they are large point of inspiration. Given the similarity you share with a focus on the conceptual it makes sense, but could you point out one or two specific thing s about their work that has influenced you the most?
Pilat: Marcel DuChamp was the first one who established art as an idea and as a huge innovation. So when I first went to Boston Dynamics and I saw the robots up and down the stairs I thought this is kind of similar to the moment when Duchamp was painting the staircase.
As for Tinguely, his relationship with the machines and very personal kind of silly approach feels similar to mine. Previously I was thinking portraits of derelict machines, and then I thought ok I wanted to try something new. When I first stated out I did dark colors with the robots so and they looked menacing, so I realized I wanted to use bright colors; They are silly not that serious. Then that’s the connection to Tinguely, he didn’t treat the machines seriously he kind of took them off the pedestal and had fun with them.
Pennock: It is my understanding that you grew up at the very end of the cold-war era in Poland where an intellectual and literal revolution was taking place against the old Communist Regime. How has this has impacted your openness towards innovation as an artist?
Pilat: That was very important to me, so basically in Poland or Europe it’s an old culture; everything is so serious and we have history that’s very dark. America influenced me in the sense that I felt America has a different power structure that is related to the machine and technology. I suppose you think about the Rockefeller - trains, big old oil industry - and now I think that it has shifted to technology. I think because i have grown up in Eastern Europe i think a lot about benevolent powers versus totlaetarian and dark powers. I am very optimistic about America and I think that technology is a place of power, I know that technology is great;
I think of myself as a propoganda artist for the machine because I grew up with a lot of propoganda art and the machine is my apprentice.
Story Pennock is a college student and co-founder of the Rosebud News. As her name would suggest, she loves telling stories and giving her unsolicited opinion about literature, history, and current events. Her pastimes include going to museums, reading, researching historical fashion, playing guitar, listening to Brit-pop and maintaining her Duo Lingo Italian/Turkish/Portuguese streak (just dont ask her to say anything other than nouns).