Blame David Lynch for the robot apocalypse

David Lynch is creating art with robots.

Sort of. The legendary artist and filmmaker is involved with a project meant to enhance our understanding of human development. This is of course being undertaken with robots. No, seriously. The robots have an AI capacity imbued with curiosity. They want to learn about their surroundings and imitate what they see. David Lynch sculpted the faces for the bots. Here's how he anticipates someone's reaction to them:

"I think they will sense a personality coming from them. They'll want to be, you know, friends with the robots," Lynch says. "They're curious little beings."

Indeed they are. Weaving about what looks like sizable drops of red and orange paint sprouting...I don't know, hot dogs on springs. And for anyone who has seen David Lynch's Unstaged concert for Duran Duran, the hot dog reference makes perfect sense. As shown in the pic above, there are also little green balls rolling about the white cube environs. It is through this room that the devices with the sculpted faces operate.

"They're watching, they're thinking, they're trying to figure things out," Lynch says.

I'm sure there are those who find the faces creepy. They're somewhat skeletal or Scream-like ( I mean Munch, not the movie. Although that might have applications here too, it just isn't my artistic style.) There are also lights behind the faces. Red and green glow from within, giving them a rather ghostly appearance. Like many things David Lynch, you'll either find the work creatively genius or be entirely weirded out by it. While I have been unsettled or confounded by his work at times, I have never required anything to palliate it or render it other than what it is.

Oh and the robots are beginning to learn their own language and to interact with one another.

The more I think about this project, the more I like it. I mean if you're going to produce machines that may one day overtake the human race, why not do it with artistic style?

David Lynch presents The Terminator.


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