The performance

The performance

The robot used for the performance is a collaborative robot equipped with artificial intelligence: an algorithm designed to mimic the gestures of a portrait painter.

The robot, whose hand holds a burin, begins engraving the first plate. The plate is then used to make a print, as shown in the following figure.

The last engraving is figuratively incomprehensible; one can only vaguely guess the original subject. With each "degenerative production" of the burin, the robot slows down, begins to flicker, and makes mistakes, similar to what happens to a man when he grows old and suffers from dementia.

At the end of the last production run, the robot dies. This event is realized by the action of a hammer that hits the hard disk where the algorithm is stored, physically destroying it. Thus, the algorithm, of which I do not keep any other copies, is lost forever. The intelligence of the robot disappears and all that remains is its artistic production.

The performance thus devised produces objects that convey messages and feelings on different levels.

There are:

- The plates;

- The first prints of the plates;

- The destroyed hard disk, which, although it cannot be destroyed, symbolizes death, in the same way that the body of a deceased person lends itself to the funeral liturgy; the hard disk is placed in an appropriate place and its memory is signaled by the presence of a tombstone.