The creation of human art has always been deeply intertwined with questions about technology, in part because technological development has helped drive the sorts of art possible and in part because it causes us to reconsider just what we think art is supposed to be. But at every stage there has continued to be a human element to the production of "art" — technology's role, as medium or mediator, has remained only partial. What happens when the human element is removed (or at least nearly removed)?
Technology's role in making art possible can be seen all around us. New technologies made new pigments available for painting. New technologies created tools that allowed people to change how they sculpted in stone. New technologies have even created entire new mediums in the form of photography, films, and even computers.
At the same time, these changing technologies have altered our basic perception of just what "art" is supposed to be. Walter Benjamin is perhaps best known for his analysis of this in his essay "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit" (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction). Published in 1934, Benjamin wrote about the consequences of how technological reproductions of works of "art" could cause them to lose their uniqueness.
Previously, it was this very uniqueness of a painting or vase which made it "special" and hence worthy of the designation of "art" — but it also ensured that it remained in the hands of the wealthy who had the means to purchase and support the production of unique works. The introduction of mechanical reproduction changed this relationship between humans and art because it meant that everyone could have exact replicas of the same photograph or the same film in their homes, meaning that "art" was no longer a matter of being "unique" and could, moreover, become more a part of the lives of the average person.
At the same time, though, the truly "unique" artworks were infused with an even more powerful aura — a copy of the Mona Lisa is nothing at all like the original, and that seems even more true today in the age of mechanical reproduction than it was in the past when uniqueness was, well, rather commonplace.
Such a seismic shift in how people related to art may be repeated because new technology is allowing for the creation of "art" independently (sort of) from humanity. Researchers in Australia and the United States, working in concert over the internet, have created what they dub "the semi-living artist." A robot located in Perth draws pictures, but the movements are not controlled by a computer in Perth, in Australia, or indeed by any human being or computer at all. No, the robot was controlled by signals from a collection of rat brain cells which had been grown in Atlanta, Georgia.
Those brain cells are alive, obviously, but they aren't part of an independent living organism — they are "alive" in the same way that any group of cultured skin or liver cells grown in a petri dish are "alive." Instead of being used to test toxins or medicine, though, they are being used to control a robot — one ostensibly creating a work of "art."
I say "ostensibly" because this development forces us to confront the question of just what "art" is supposed to be. As I noted above, humans have always been intimately involved in the production of art in the past. Even when artworks are reproduced mechanically, there was still some "original" that started the process.
