12.1: metal performance discussion

On Tuesday we had a discussion about Steve Dixon's essay "Metal Performance." A few main ideas in the piece and the discussion were humanizing machines, the dehumanizing effect of using machines, camp ideas and aesthetics, and using electronics/mechatronics in artworks.

Camp aesthetics are the use of mainstream trends, images, rituals, etc in a way that is clunky or over-the-top with the goal of being subversive and/or liberated. Though camp is inseparable from queer culture, Dixon notes that it also makes sense to describe robotic/technological artworks through the lens of camp. The clunkiness and remixing of ubiquitous technologies aligns with camp strategies.

We talked about the fact that no matter how advanced or developed a robot is, there is always some recognizable, even if not fully articulable, difference between robot and human. That gap is an exciting place for artworks to be in conversation with.

I am personally interested in reading this work, which was published in 2004, with an eye to how developments in AI (the non-physical aspect of robots) recontextualize the points Dixon is making; Especially since the work's title is a wordplay on metal performance shaders, graphics cards that give computers their incredible computing power, which make AI possible on laptops, etc. It does seem that some technologies are reaching a point where it might one day be impossible to tell a difference between humans and artifice. Might it be equally interesting to now explore not only gaps between human and robot, but also where they are converging?