Nila works on a painting

In 2008, Laura Greig constructed Nila, robot artist extraordinaire, from hobby servomotors, household hardware, Arduino, Processing, a Mac Mini, and a webcam. Nila, like many artists, has a camera, palette and is given paint—most—days. She follows light as it courses through the camera, tracking the brightest points, and committing these impressions to her canvas. Nila’s paintings are rhythmic. Swift, circular brushwork accompanies smaller strokes that poke at the canvas, searching for the light of a darker environment, outlining shadows as they flicker past her camera. For “Exhibitionism,” Greig invites viewers to engage with Nila; teaching her art history and in turn, sharing their knowledge of art history with one another.

Greig writes, “We’re great anthropomorphizers and I think it’s such a wonderful trait. It allows us to connect with almost anything.” The rapture Nila evokes from visitors who interact with her is a product of this fantasy—our inherent desire to adopt Nila as our own, to associate feelings and personality traits to her. People who know Nila do this. Greig explains that she did not even realize the extent of Nila’s robotic nature until people started “cooing over her like a baby.” Why is it that we thrust our own notions of humanity onto machines? Is this the substitute for or the extension of human maternal instinct? Is that the attraction of robots? Do robots need to be humanlike or cute to make technology less threatening? Although Nila provokes questions such as these, Greig implores: “I think there is a great danger in ascribing too much humanness to robots—I push for quite the opposite! The point of asking them to make art is asking them to show us what their world is like.” Nila has much to share with us!

Ultimately, our empathy towards Nila (ascribing human-like traits to her actions and form) is what makes her teaching so successful. Without “anthropomorphizing” her, viewers would have minimal desire to explore the perception of a robot. Yet, because we can think of Nila in terms of our own experience, I believe we are more willing to expand our construction of the world and accept hers. Nila reveals, to her viewers, the very structure of her robotic language.  Communicating with Nila, in turn, encourages viewers to examine their relationship to technology in a rapid, wiki-world. Greig explains, “I try to show people what it’s like to try and befriend every piece of technology around. Nila tries to show people what it’s like to sit perfectly still and track the motion of light around the room.” In a fast changing world, the artist’s most important role may be to examine these connections in order to help us relate to a new reality. Nila, though she has a life of her own, still expresses Greig’s own concerns and visions of reality. A tension exists between technology and art, between our day-to-day experience and Nila’s brushwork, making Nila’s project a logical venue to navigate our own relationship to technology.