‘Spot’ Robot Dogs Will Soon Debut Painting Alongside World-Famous Artists

Soon, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) will welcome over 75 projects at its Triennial 2023 exhibition, bringing a mix of contemporary art, design, and architecture from 100 artists all around the world, including the likes of Sheila Hicks, Tracey Emin, and Yoko Ono.

However, some of the artists in residence won’t be like the others. Three of Boston Dynamics’ robot dogs—dubbed Spot—will be trained to paint autonomously over the course of four months, with their work displayed alongside all the other world-famous artists.

Artist Agnieszka Pilat will be leading the robot dogs in the project. This isn’t the first time she has featured them in her works, having previously tapped on the mechanical canine for a joint painting that was sold by the Polish Dominican Friars to raise funds to aid displaced Ukrainians.

Unlike previous collaborations with Spot, for the first time ever, Pilat will be training the trio of robots to paint all by themselves—using sticks of oil paint to color an acrylic ground canvas hung on a wall.

According to The Guardian, the sci-fi dogs will be programmed to understand a range of commands, allowing them to execute the moves they see fit, such as which direction in which to move the oil stick, how much pressure to apply to the canvas, or if to paint a dot or a line.

While the robots’ paintings often resemble the scribbles of a child, Pilat explained that this was deliberate, regarding the artificial intelligence (AI) helpers as young children who may “know a lot, but understand very little.”

As per the Smithsonian Magazine, the painter feels it is up to the art world to engage with such technology, which John Krafcik, former silicon valley bigwig, described as being able to capture the “magic” of futurism “in a human, heroic way.”

Will Pilat successfully work with the Spot dogs to create the “first primitive art-making of AI-enabled robots?” Only time will tell, as the NGV Triennial goes on display from December 3, 2023, to April 7, 2024, in Melbourne, Australia.

[via The Guardian and Smithsonian Magazine, images via National Gallery of Victoria]