The Dance, 2021
4K video with sound, metal floodlight stand, 50-inch TV screen, polyester straps, steel, miscellaneous screws, 3D printed PLA plastic, USB drive, rust effect paint
1 min 3 sec (looped)
370 x 80 x 65 cm
The Dance (2021) was originally 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.
The work consists of a CGI looping video featuring Spot, an autonomous robot dog currently being produced by Boston Dynamics, enacting The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker, atop a snowy mountain, surrounded by human bones and plastic water bottles. The Dance is a sombre exploration of our relationship to increasingly lifelike autonomous objects. As the camera continuously revolves around the mountain the audience becomes acutely aware that Spot is alone, enacting a perfectly executed pre-programmed routine with no one left to observe it.
The repeated actions are melancholic from the human perspective. However for Spot, an autonomous robot that has been effectively freed from its anthropoid masters, enacting The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is a joyous occasion, celebrating its own autonomy now that there is no one left to rule over its robotic body.
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.
The Dance has been included in the following exhibitions:
– switch 2023 / PLAY, curated by Triona Ryan, Carol Kennedy and Harald Turek. At switch, Nenagh, IE, 29th October – 5th November 2023.
– Passages. At D Contemporary, 23 Grafton St, London, UK, 6th – 24th June 2023.
– Raak, curated by Sacha Jongerius. At Transport Artspace, Maastricht, NL, 6th – 14th May 2023.
– The Zium Gallery, curated by Michael Berto. Online at theziumsociety.itch.io/the-zium-gallery, 2nd February 2022.
– Digging History, curated by Pita Arreola-Burns and Elliott Burns (Off Site Project). At INDUSTRA, Brno, CZ, 2nd December 2021 – 5th February 2022.
BOB BICKNELL-KNIGHT 