- Why bother with an art heist
when you can just press print?
(techno music)
You know, there's some people who say art
and technology should never mix.
Then again, anytime there's new movement in art,
you can bet someone is just waiting in the wings to cry out,
"Hey! That's not art!"
Case in point, back in 1913,
Marcel Duchamp was unveiling his work,
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2,
at a major art event in New York.
It prompted one critic to say it looked like
an explosion in a shingle factory.
Today, of course, we consider this to be a masterpiece,
which, frankly, gives me hope
for my own critically under appreciated work of art,
Nude Robot Descending a Step Ladder.
(upbeat music)
Genius is never recognized in its own time.
But even those of you who like your art low tech,
you need to realize something,
Duchamp didn't just come up with this out of his own head.
He took inspiration from something called chronophotography,
a predecessor to film.
See, he was fascinated with the way photographs
could capture objects in motion.
And today, technology is changing art more than ever.
Let's say I wanna take a famous sculpture
and make a few, you know, minor upgrades to it.
Well, first I could bring a 3D scanner
to the sculpture using lasers
or even optical cameras,
like the Microsoft Kinect,
to get a full three dimensional picture of that object.
I could then send that information
to my computer-assisted design software,
so that I could make any digital tweaks that I would like,
send that information on to a 3D printer
or a computer-controlled carving machine,
and viola, a new, improved work of art.
And it's not just for vanity projects.
In fact, in 2013,
the Museum of Art and Design launched an exhibit
that was all about this kind of fabrication.
Complete with amazing 3D sculptures on display.
People today can already use 3D printing
to make almost perfect fakes of fine paintings.
They're not just flat copies of an images,
a Dutch researcher actually used 3D scanners
and a couple of cameras and projector
to recreate the texture of paint and brush strokes.
And it's not just the tools that are changing,
we're getting a blurring of lines between what is art
and what is technology.
We're exploring new frontiers of what art can actually be.
Take the Avatar Machine for example,
now have you ever wondered what you would look like
from a third person perspective,
like you're a character in World of Warcraft?
Well, Marc Owens did,
so he built the Avatar Machine.
It has a harness that holds
a rear-mounted forward-facing wide-angle camera
that feeds live video to a head-mounted display,
so it's like you're looking over your own shoulder.
It explores how a change in perspective
can also change the level of responsibility we feel
for our own actions.
It's another example of technology and art blurring together
and it's not the only one.
Check out the Pyro Board.
Now, this takes the acoustic profile of sound
to generate standing waves of fire
that respond in real time to changes in music.
It's pretty hypnotic.
Or look at these machines
that damage themselves as they operate.
There's one that will saw itself in half
and another that will dump sand into its own gearbox
until it grinds to a halt.
It's interesting, strange, and a little sad.
What are these things?
Are they machines or are they design projects?
Are they gadgets or are they art?
Well, I say they're both.
So, what does the future of art look like?
Well, maybe we'll see a continuation
of blurring lines between science, technology and art.
That raises a question for all of you this week.
Do you think modern technologies,
like robots and video games,
count as art?
Tell me if you do,
explain your answer.
I wanna hear all about it in the comments below.
You guys are brilliant,
so share your brilliance with me, please.
Then make sure you hit like.
Subscribe to this channel.
And after all that, check out these videos over here,
they're a real work of art.
(uplifting music)