Artists and Robots, the compelling exhibition at Paris Grand Palais

If there’s one exhibition 2018 to see in Paris, it’s Artistes et Robots at the Grand Palais, an exhibition displayed from April 5 to July 9, 2018. In this exhibition, works displayed are made by robots, “machines to create”, please!

It’s a first for the Grand Palais who wanted to report “artificial imagination”, a common term to design robotic art, generative art and algorithmic art.

In the centenary-old rooms, we leave for a genuine spectacular trip, an immersion in the future of international creation. For this very interactive exhibition, the curators – Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, art history teacher at Sciences Po, and Jérôme Neutres, head of strategy and development of the RMN – went from the 50’s to the latest technological advances art the service of art!

The Artistes et Robots exhibition at the Grand Palais evolves around 3 parts:

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• Introduction to the exhibition:
  the Grand Palais offers to come back on kinetic art from the 50’s, this part of history that allows men to play with perspective to alter their works. The same decade, Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) creates a series of painting machines, Méta-matics animated by an electric motor. Between sculptures and performances, they work thanks to the intervention of the viewers and create unique drawings. The first robot artist was born!
  
  
• Creating machine:
  so, in the first part are presented robots that create works: they can be seen and work with the body and the arm that draw, paint or engrave. From the assisting machines we touch and handle, robots move to mechanisms featuring a kind of reasoning and able to detect thinks thanks to information technology. 
  
  
  We discover works by Jean Tinquely, Nam June Paik, Nicolas Schöffer, Leonel Moura, Patrick Tresset, So Kanno and Takahiro Yamaguchi, J. Lee Thompson, Arcangelo Sassolino.
  
  
• Programmed work:
  in the second part, robots are computer and disappear from the field of vision: they give the form, to the work, its movement, its generative characteristic (ad infinitum), its interactive quality with the public. We find the Untitled crab by Arcangelo Sassolino (2006), a strong crab with 6 pincers that moves by hanging onto the floor. This automaton with slow and frightening movements creating squeaking and metallic noises is a performer itself, like a scary artist!
  
  With works by Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnar, Iannis Xenakis, Demian Conrad, Raquel Kogan, Ryoji Ikeda, Pascal Dombis, Elias Crespin, Jacopo Baboni Schilingi, Edmond Couchot and Michel Bret, Miguel Chevalier, Joan Fontcuberta, Michael Hansmeyer and Peter Kogler.
  
  
• Robots empowerment:
  finally, in the last part, we question the Artificial Intelligence, thought up to be at the service of the body and a know-how. With the work "Portrait on the Fly", Laurent Mignonneau and Christa Sommerer (2017) offers us our portrait made out of 10,000 flies.
  
  
  We find works by Oscar Sharp, Pascal Haudressy, Memo Akten, ORLAN, Takashi Murakami to name a few.

And like a hymn for the future, the exhibition ends on music with the video clip of Technologic by Daft Punk. After this exhibition, we feel alive, invigorated, we truly attend a revolution!

Paintings, immersive works, sculptures, cinema and music: all creations are presented in this exhibition which is the fruit of the collaborations between artists and robotic programs.