Ken Goldberg, Artist and UC Berkeley Professor, will share examples of his robotic artworks exploring the boundary between human & machine. The word "robot" was coined shortly after the 1918 pandemic in a theatrical play about mechanical workers organizing a rebellion to defeat their human overlords. A century later, after new developments in computer vision, machine learning, and automation, fueled by venture capital & governments, robots continue to disrupt labor, trade, and political stability. Now, paired with the latest advances in artificial intelligence, robots foist new opportunities & threats on modern life, and continue raising new questions about the distinction between humanity and the machinic.

To contextualize this collection of artwork, Ken references Sigmund Freud's Uncanny (1919) and Masahiro Mori's Uncanny Valley (1970). He will share robot paintings from his first art exhibit at CMU and art installations such as the Telegarden (1995-2004), a living garden tended by a robot operated by over 100,000 visitors over the Internet, and AlphaGarden (2020-), a fully automated garden that took an unexpected twist during the pandemic.

*Refreshments will be served.

The Code at Lang Colloquium (CaLC) is an event series putting scholars, artists, and other practitioners in conversation with New School faculty to examine what it means to do critical computer science within the arts, humanities, and social sciences.