Week 3: Robotics + Art

Professor Machiko Kusahara presented us with a new perspective on Robotics. This lecture compared and contrasted the robotic cultures in Japan and the United States. Kusahara taught us how robotics and technology were commonly used in Japan in art. Engineers had a fascination with making humanoids which varied from the Western fascination of using robotics to fuel the industrial revolution. 

Astro Boy, Vol. 1

            I learned that robotics and art were popular subjects in Japanese animation and Manga. She uses the example of Astro Boy to show Japan’s fascination with cybernetic biological organisms. Astro Boy was a cyborg that had human emotions and ethics who became a cultural basis for artists in Japan. By showing human emotions and ethics, we can see how robots are seen as friends in Japanese culture. Seeing robots as friends is something that is not common in Western culture. Often in Western films, robots are featured as evil and scary. They are seen as a threat to world domination over humans. Professor Kusahara says that this notion of being afraid of robots comes from industrialization. Machines in Western civilization started to push families of their farms and into the city to work in factories. In a sense, humans were being replaced by robots, and they were forced to work around them. This feeling of being replaced is a leading factor of this fear of machines. The Terminator (1984) is an example of this fear of robots. The whole plot revolves around an android that is sent from the future to prevent a war between humanity and in the future. Contrast this to Ghost in the Shell (2017) which is an adaptation of a Japanese manga. This movie is set in the near future where a cyborg counter-terrorism operative tries to save humanity from any future cyberterrorist attacks.

Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Japan underwent industrialization in a completely different way. Before the “Industrial Revolution,”  Japan had most of its borders secure from any western colonialization. Once they noticed the rapid colonialization in other parts of Asia, they decided to modernize as fast as possible not to be colonized. In Japan, machines helped fight against colonialization. This is why the Japanese saw the robots as friendly and not threatening. However, their resistance to modernization put them at a disadvantage in the second World War. Other countries had much more advanced technologies and proved it by dropping two atomic bombs. Soon after the war, Astro Boy was created with a favorable aspect of nuclear power. Rather than denying the impact that the weapons had on them, they created Astro Boy to shed light on the strength of atomic energy and to cope with the effects of the bomb. The border between an artist and an engineer was starting to become less clear. Engineers created robots with artist commentaries. 

"Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Wikipedia. April 18, 2019. Accessed April 21, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki.

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." 1936, 1-7. Accessed April 16, 2019.

Futanari, Captain. "Ghost in the Shell Comparison 1995 Animation/2017 Live Action." YouTube. November 14, 2016. Accessed April 21, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHghd6SXbAM.

Online, UC. "Robotics MachikoKusahara 1." YouTube. April 14, 2012. Accessed April 21, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQZ_sy-mdEU.

Tezuka, Osamu. "Astro Boy, Vol. 1." Amazon. April 09, 2002. Accessed April 21, 2019. https://www.amazon.com/Astro-Boy-Vol-Osamu-Tezuka/dp/1569716765.