Face the Robots (if you dare) at Gewerbemuseum

Despite living here for five years now, last week featured my first ever visit to Winterthur’s Gewerbemuseum.

The thing that caught my eye was an engaging poster for the Hello Robot exhibition which consisted of a robot building a structure out of stones (c30 tonnes) and twine (c120km) on the Kirchplatz.

The exhibition, which considers robots in four sections: ‘Science and Fiction’, ‘Programmed to Work’, ‘Friend and Helper’ and ‘Two into One’ explores our relationship with robots while asking some pretty fundamental questions that promote a great deal of thought, especially in today’s climate with the evolution of AI and its un-nerving implications. But it also reminds us about the way machines have crept into much of our daily lives too.

It certainly has a wow factor, often in quite chilling form. On entering, I am confronted by a selection of life-sized robots and a constantly recurring black and white video clip featuring Elektro, the Moto-Man which was presented by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation at the New York Fair in 1939. The 7’ bronze Adonis could talk, smoke cigarettes and one of his catchlines was ‘My brain is bigger than yours’ Nearby, the R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy) that seems to have been modelled on ET, was Nintendo’s early attempt, launched in 1985, to transport a virtual video game into a robot – the interaction was so slow and cumbersome that it didn’t really take off (a thought suddenly hit me gazing at this ET look-a-likie - this was just 33 years ago..)

On the far wall featuring great science fiction movies such as Blade Runner and The Matrix (my two personal faves) was one of the original posters (only four in the world) in all its art deco glory, of the film Metropolis (1927) a pioneering work in the Sci-fi genre. It includes one of the first robots ever depicted in cinema and the protagonists’ plight to reduce class division in the city. ‘Instead of reducing toil for the workers in Metropolis, automation has only amplified their suffering’ I think grimly of the hundreds of emails I used to have to deal with in my work as I saunter into the far room on the right.

‘Do we really need Robots?’ is the foreboding question above a host of pictures by photographer Eric Pickersgill exploring people’s disregard for their immediate surroundings while they stare at their empty hands where their phones would usually be installed. Angie and Me (2014) is especially tragic.  

I enjoy a nostalgic go at the video platform game Mega Man (does anyone remember Manic Miner on ZX Spectrum?) and, stepping into the next room, watch the film The Last Job on Earth where a fully automated world has created rampant inequality and slums filled with people ‘condemned to live without the comforts afforded by progress.’ At the end is a series of quotes, including one by Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England: ‘Machines are already undertaking tasks which were unthinkable – if not unimaginable – a decade ago.’

Wandering throughout the rest of the exhibition I especially enjoy the Mon Oncle clip where Mr Hulot struggles with his sister’s obsession with living a modern lifestyle, I enjoy being reminded of loveable Wall-E (another fave film) and recoil at the sight of a robot arm with a milk bottle suspended over a baby’s crib with the ominous words suspended above: ‘Do you want a robot to take care of You?’

The Waste is beautiful and reminds me of Ex Machina – I briefly wonder why this incredible film isn’t featured in the exhibition – but then the meaning of the title grips me and the awe turns to disgust as I read about  a techno-consumer culture where body parts are no longer fixed components and are instead disposable, eventually becoming ‘waste’. And again, a scene from Ex Machina returns to haunt me – the image of all the half-finished female bodies in the closet…

Passing a sad robot that is unable to blow out her birthday candles, I arrive at - for me, the climax of the exhibition - a huge screen featuring the music video to Björk’s All isFull of Love (released on her third studio album Homogenic in 1997) which depicts Björk as a robot being assembled in a factory while she passionately kisses another female robot. The video has been often cited as one of the best of all time and a milestone in computer animation.

The exhibition urges us to consider how we should respond to all this – and plays its part in sounding the alarm for a discussion that is urgently needed - before we leave it all too late….

Hello Robot will continue at the Gewerbemuseum until Sunday, 4^th November. Admission 12fr adults, children go free.

https://www.gewerbemuseum.ch/en