robotlab: manifest [2008/2017]

Inspired by: Peter Weibel

Autonomously, the industrial robot in the installation »manifest« by artist group robotlab writes manifestos for a utopian society of humans and machines. These manifestos consist of sentences presenting assumptions, which the robot independently generates and writes down making use of stored terms from ethics, law, technology, and society, and also a collection of sentence structures from judicial and fictional legal texts, which the robot combines algorithmically. As a prototype of the robot avant-garde, the machine meddles creatively in the legislation of a future society in which humans and machines are equal before the law.

»manifest« is part of a long tradition of manifestos in art and politics. However, instead of the mass reproduction of a uniform text with propagandistic statements, here the machine though mass produces numbered unique documents which each carry an individual message. Unlike humans, though, a robot does not possess any form of morality or a sense of justice; it is therefore utterly free in formulating its legal hypotheses. The meaning of each and every manifesto only comes into existence through humans reading it. The human mind instinctively comprehends the meaning of the robot’s assertions and considers the possible consequences of such laws.

Video documentary:

ZKM | Videostudio

Camera: Frenz Jordt, Christina Zartmann
Editing: Güzide Coker, Christina Zartmann
Off-Voice: Sabrina Bell
Sound recording: Anton Kossjanenko
Music: Ashot Danielyan