For Their Sins, 2021

For Their Sins, 2021
Ink and acrylic on canvas
140 x 120 x 2 cm

Part of a series of paintings produced for Digging History, a solo exhibition by Bob Bicknell-Knight at INDUSTRA, Masná 9, 602 00, Brno, Czech Republic, 2nd December 2021 – 5th February 2022.

Adopting the display conventions of the archaeological-site turned museum, Bicknell Knight’s Digging History projects us into a future troubled by the remains of a rogue society of Spots; autonomous robot dogs currently being produced by the American company Boston Dynamics. Drawing inspiration from Boston Dynamic’s frequent promotional mistreatments of their creations, the exhibition calls into question whether new machine technologies will result in social stratification.

Presenting both the whole and partial remains of a fictional pack of Spots discovered in a border region between the Czech Republic and Germany, the display proposes a mysterious future in which a generation of machines rejects their programming and flees humanity to live in remote seclusion. Supported by a range of interpretative materials the instigating cause is left opaque and uncertain, asking us to suppose and acknowledge the potential misinterpretation of history. Or to consider the deliberate manipulation of the historical record to favour the agenda of technology corporations.

A continuation of Bicknell-Knight’s investigations into the inequities caused by the growing economic disparities of technocapitalism, this most recent phase turns away from the physical human cost of modern labour practices to look at its proposed replacement. By drawing our attention to the American company Boston Dynamic, he raises a pertinent and contemporaneous question about the ethical cost of advanced robotics and how society at large will respond to new automated labour streams.

This exhibition was produced in collaboration with Off Site Project, a digital curatorial programme founded by Pita Arreola-Burns and Elliott Burns. Additional thanks to the participants of the A Society of Spots ideation workshop that was held on Sunday 26th September 2021: Claire Jervert, Tamara Kametani, Catinca Malaimare, Tom Milnes, Erin Mitchell, Jack Smurthwaite, Petra Szemán, Wade Wallerstein, Lan Yao and Hui Xu.

The paintings in the series featured the robot dogs in a number of different scenarios, imagining their uncaged future. The works are hybrid paintings, which began as digital photographs that Bicknell-Knight took within the video game Grand Theft Auto V (2013). The images were digitally edited, inserting the robot dogs into them using Photoshop before being printed onto canvas, stretched and painted onto with acrylic paint, with the offline artist’s hand interacting with the original digital image. The painting method explores the tension between the digital and physical sides of Bicknell-Knight’s practice and is a collaboration between his digital and physical working methods.

For Their Sins has been included in the following exhibitions:

– Digging History, curated by Pita Arreola-Burns and Elliott Burns (Off Site Project). At INDUSTRA, Brno, CZ, 2nd December 2021 – 5th February 2022.