The National Gallery of Victoria is set to welcome a group of unexpected artists in residence: three Boston Dynamics robot dogs, which will be trained to autonomously paint a work over four months in the gallery.
Agnieszka Pilat, the artist of choice among Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires and venture capitalists who has worked as an artist in residence at both SpaceX and Boston Dynamics, is known for incorporating technology and futurism into her work, particularly for her paintings with the 30kg Boston Dynamics robot dogs known as “Spot”. She even lives in New York with one, which she has named Basia.
But for the first time ever, Pilat is training the robots to paint by themselves for a work in this year’s NGV Triennial, opening in Melbourne in December. The three robots will paint for four months using sticks of oil paint on an acrylic ground canvas attached to the wall. They will be programmed to understand a range of commands, which they will execute in whatever order they see fit – down to the direction the arm moves, how hard it presses the canvas and whether it paints a dot or a line.
Pilat and the robots are among the 100 artists and designers taking part in the triennial, alongside Yoko Ono, Tracey Emin and Paris haute couture house Schiaparelli.
Pilat will hand over Basia to the NGV, along with Bonnie and Archie. She regards Basia as “a companion” and says she will miss it while it paints in Melbourne.
“It is like having a small child – at some point you have to let the child get on the bus by themselves, that is how this feels,” she says.
A classically trained portrait painter, Pilar first became acquainted with the robots when she was commissioned to paint a portrait of a model known as a Spot by Boston Dynamics.
“I thought of it as a new celebrity, a new ruling class,” she says. “Portraits reflect power in society – Andy Warhol was painting celebrities, old portraiture reflected aristocracy. Now the power is going towards the machine and it’s our obligation to really engage with it. It’s on us, their parents, to engage and train them to be good future citizens.”
The robots’ paintings are often childlike, which is a deliberate programming choice because Pilat regards them as “young children in human years, who know a lot, but understand very little”.
Pilat’s collectors include telecommunications billionaire Craig McCaw and former Waymo CEO John Krafcik; she was even commissioned to create paintings for the latest Matrix film. Some critics have dismissed her art as pandering to whims of the tech elite. Pilat has previously said that “the art world is notoriously unhappy about tech billionaires, and I am singing their song”.
And footage of robot dogs – which are mostly used in mining and construction – frequently goes viral, with some describing their uncanny movements and agility as “creepy” and “dystopian”. Robot dogs have been used as surveillance on the US-Mexico border and even crime scenes: in 2021 the New York police department returned a Boston Dymanics robot after widespread backlash to it being deployed in the Bronx.
But Pilat regards them as “playful” and partners of humanity”. “I am techno-optimist – I like to say that I do for the machine what Diego Rivera did for the working class. And when people meet Spot in person, the vast majority fall in love very fast – it’s hard not to be charmed by them because they’re very cute.”
Other artists and designers among the 100 in the 2023 NGV Triennial include Ono, who will present a large text-based work on the outside of the gallery; new acquisitions from British artist Emin that include a five-metre-high text-based neon light installation of her handwriting; and clothing from Schiaparelli, with artistic director Daniel Roseberry set to present a selection from their recent collections.
The 88-year-old US sculptor Sheila Hicks will present her 2022 work Nowhere to Go, a 10-metre high sculpture of colourful, bulbous forms; while 79-year-old Pitjantjatjara artist Betty Muffler will show her epic painting Ngangkari Ngura (Healing Country), which was painted from above and shows an eagle-eye view of Country.
British artist David Shrigley, known for his dark and humorous, will install his sculpture Really Good outside the gallery: a seven-metre-high thumbs-up conceived for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth in the immediate aftermath of the UK’s Brexit vote. Inside, fellow Brit Ryan Gander will install animatronic mice in holes in the walls of the gallery, which will deliver prophetic messages in the voice of his young daughter.
Ten weavers and their apprentices from east Arnhem Land will present Mun-dirra, a 100-metre-long woven fish fence produced over two years in Maningrida . Tokyo-based artist Azuma Makoto will create a room-sized installation of Australian flowers and botanicals frozen in time inside crystalline acrylic blocks, while US artist Hugh Hayden will exhibit a huge installation depicting an apocalyptic school classroom overrun with branches and dodo skeletons.
Announcing the lineup on Wednesday, NGV director Tony Ellwood said the triennial would be “a visually arresting and thought-provoking view of the world today”, tackling three major themes: magic, memory and matter.
“In the last three years since our last triennial, societies have undergone major structural changes … The NGV triennial offers a platform to artists to voice their concerns, ideas and importantly their hopes,” he said.
