Pilat trained the robot dogs to paint.Mark Sommerfeld
- Agnieszka Pilat is an artist-in-residence at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
- She trained robot dogs to paint using 16 symbols she designed, which are part of an exhibition.
Artist Agnieszka Pilat taught robot dogs made by Boston Dynamics to paint and they've been rewarded with a four-month residency at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.
Engineers at robotics firm Boston Dynamics taught Pilat how to use its robot dogs called Spot.
"For my show 'Heterobota,' the robots are fully autonomous," Pilat told Business Insider. "This was a significant shift in my practice as previously I was always in the studio with the robots, where they felt more like an extension of my arm."
The Polish-born artist worked with engineers and the museum to bring her vision to life. The robots can be seen painting, navigating their environment, and self-charging in the show, which runs until April 7, 2024.
The exhibition includes 36 paintings created over four months, and the theme is generative AI. Pilat said a language is embedded in the 16 symbols featured in the paintings.
"I like to think of these paintings as possibly ancient scrolls or cave drawings — we might be witnessing the birth of a new civilization, and with it, a new language; perhaps the first attempt at communication," she said.
She added that she's asking audiences to consider whether the scrolls would last for centuries and whether future sentient AI might look at them in a similar way to how humans perceive cave drawings.
Take a look at some photographs of the exhibition and the paintings created by the robot dogs.