DESIGN:Hello Robot
Whether in the form of delivery drones, smart sensors, or Industry 4.0 , in recent years, robotics has found its way into our everyday lives, changing them in fundamental ways. Design has a central role to play in this process, for it is designers who shape the interfaces between humans and machines.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Vitra Design Museum Archive
The exhibition “Hello, Robot: Design between Human and Machine” at Vitra Design Museum examines the current boom in robotics in detail for the first time. With 200 exhibits from the fields of design and art and will include robots used in the home, in nursing care, and in industry as well as computer games, media installations, and examples of films and literature in which robots feature. It will show the wide variety of forms that robotics takes today and at the same time broaden our awareness of the associated ethical, social, and political issues. During the last decade, digitalisation has caused a radical redefinition of robotics. Nowadays, robots do not just build cars and washing machines or transport us in self-propelled trains from one airport terminal to another, but appear in a host of other forms, ranging from communicative domestic appliances, the so-called Internet of Things, to the self-learning algorithms in computer programmes, known as bots. Whereas robotics used to be the exclusive domain of engineers and IT experts, today designers are helping to shape the current boom in robotics in key ways, for it is often they who decide how and where we encounter robots, what kind of relationship we form with them, and how we interact with them or they with us. The exhibition introduces us to robots in four steps. The first section of the exhibition traces the fascination that artificial humans have long exerted on people in the modern age and looks at how popular culture has shaped our perception of robots. The second section is devoted to the field in which robotics first made a breakthrough: industry and the world of work. Whereas robots are typically perceived in this context as a threat to jobs, the exhibition looks at the current debate on this subject from a number of very different perspectives. The spectrum of exhibits ranges here from classic industrial robots to an installation by the group RobotLab, in which a robot produces manifestos on a production line, thus questioning where the boundary lies between work that can be automated and human creativity. The third section of the exhibition shows how we are gradually coming face to face with the new technology as a friend and helper in our everyday lives, in our households, in nursing care, as a digital companion, or even in cybersex. The fourth section looks at the increasing blurring of the boundaries between humans and robots – exemplified by our living in “learning buildings”, travelling through “smart cities”, or having smart sensors implanted in our bodies. Outside the museum, the Elytra Filament Pavilion complements the exhibition. This bionic baldachin is an impressive example of the growing influence of robotics on architecture. The individual modules were defined by an algorithm and then produced with the help of an industrial robot. The pavilion was realised by a team from the University of Stuttgart that included Achim Menges and has already been shown at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Info: Curators: Amelie Klein, Erika Pinner, Thomas Geisler, Marlies Wirth & Fredo de Smet, Vitra Design Museum, Charles-Eames-Straße 2, Weil am Rhein, Duration: 11/2-14/5/17, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-18:00, www.design-museum.de
