I hate art. It confuses me. It makes me feel things. All I wanted was a distraction from life while surfing the Internet then I came across Can’t Help Myself1 by Sun Yuan & Peng Yu2. It is a strange piece of art. It’s a robotic arm, engineered and programmed to do a specific task. Just looking at it, it’s a machine cleaning up red goop in an art gallery. Nothing special about it really, but, why is it evoking a depressing sensation in my gut? Why do I feel a sense of morbid futility as this does what it’s programmed to do? And should I be experiencing these feelings about a robot?
The first thought that came into my head when viewing Can’t Help Myself was the story of Sisyphus. The proud, hubris human who defied the gods in life and in death3. The Gods punished him cursing him with a task to push a large boulder up the steep mountainous terrain of Tartarus. And as Sisyphus reaches the summit, the boulder is cursed to roll away from the top and hurl back to the bottom. So Sisyphus hast to go back and get the boulder again, for all the days to come until the end of time. If that was my task, where there is no satisfaction of completing the work because it has no end, would be torture. This robot, from a human perspective, has one, useless, pointless, monotonous job with no end in sight. Much like Sisyphus’ boulder rolling back down the hill I saw that machine and thought it was being tortured with it’s programmed task. Torture I tell ya!
“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
– Andy Warhol
As the video clips of Can’t Help Myself enchanted my eyes, there was a moment where the machine seemed to dance. Tt ceased sweeping the red viscous liquid back towards itself, the handle rose up, moved around above it’s main mechanism and did a twist. The dance didn’t go for long; the liquid dispersed and the task had to be resumed. Seeing this I felt in that moment, a reflection of the stereotypical office worker. Go to to work, come home, consume dinner, sleep and repeat. Maybe once in a while you go for a dance, a drink or a holiday; but you come back to your work. The task, the job, the work, is never complete.
If you’ve got an unfulfilling fruitless job/work/task, what is there to look forward to? I think that was reflected in the dance break from the robotic arm. The connection of this art and repetitive unfulfilling work, leaves me feeling empty.
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
―Frank Herbert,Dune
I pulled myself back to reality to dislodge my emotions and look at the raw materials. Can’t Help Myself is a machine doing its programmed task: draw the red goop closer to itself. The artists designed it; they chose the handle, they decided on the viscosity of the red goop and programmed it. Did the artists program that dance in as well? Yes, they did with 32 unique dance moves. Those programmed dances invoked an emotional response in me. But, the machine is sentient or it is wanting to entertain the watcher, it moves according to what its been programmed by the artists.
My mind darted to the world of Dune4 from Frank Herbert5. and In the Dune universe, there is a bloody revolt against all thinking machines called the Butlerian Jihad6. Unlike other sci fi stories like The Terminator or The Matrix where the AI minds of machines acted on their own to take over or start a battle against humanity. The Butlerian Jihad begun because the chief programmers behind the thinking machines were altering and enslaving other humans. The machines were not at fault, they were simply doing what they were programmed to do.
The fight for humans to regain their autonomy and freedom was costly. The impact of the thinking machine’s control, manipulation and power reverberated over millennia. So much so, to where in the current timeline of Dune, any computation or thinking machines are completely outlawed.
Sun Yuan & Peng Yu created an art piece, a machine. A machine that has been programmed to sway people’s feelings and emotions through the robotic arm. Watching this art piece, it certainly worked on me.
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”
– Edgar Degas
I stumbled across Can’t Help Myself quite by accident and from only 6 minutes of looking at it, it invoked many thoughts and emotions within me. Okay, I suppose, I don't hate art. I hate confronting myself through art. I got a whole bunch of reactions, emotions, my thoughts just looking at something! And as the title of this piece suggests, I just couldn't help myself.
https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/34812
https://www.galleriacontinua.com/artists/sun-yuan-peng-yu-73
https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Sisyphus/sisyphus.html
https://dunenovels.com/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/58.Frank_Herbert
It is interesting that you mention how you "you dont like art, it confuses you", although art should make you feel things. Is that how we should define "art". Did you feel that same thing when you experienced the great murals in the Boston Public Library by the master artist John Singer Sargent? Would it be more fair to say you don't get modern art, or more so, "art" of this sort? Trust me, you would not be alone. Like the banana taped to the wall, in my opinion, these are obviously not representations of fine art, or necessarily modern art, but more of someone trying to be creative through being provactive and ultimately leaving the viewer into believing that they are supposed to view the piece as insightful? So do they follow the herd? Yes, I know art is subjective, but it reminds me of the point a recent commercial made, where there is this young man who places his dirty worn shoe on the floor in the middle of an art gallery, and people start gathering around, to oooh and awww over it. Enjoyed your writing, and drawing the similarity to a Sisyphus task was great. I suppose the robot arm or banana on a wall can be technically art, i have a hard time accepting it lol.☮️