The significance of the body in human-machine collaboration and artistic practices ‘Embodiment and Creativity’

The paper attempts to examine the implications and influences of computer generative images in artistic practices, particularly focusing on collaboration between a drawing robot and an artist. Although, there has been much research on human-computer interaction, and digital creative practices in computer science and engineering, cognitive neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, there is little research on focusing the material body, since most of software can be seen as disembodied. In this light, emphasizing on the significance of the material body, the paper focuses on the practical, psychological, and social interactions between a robot (which ‘has’ a body) and humans (artists and programmers) and explores the ‘(dis) embodied process’ of machine (robot) and human artistic collaborative practices through examining the schemes of ‘intersubjective relations’ between 1) programmer and artist, and ‘inter-subject and object relations’ between 2) machine (robot) and programmer, 3) machine (robot) and artist. The paper also discusses ‘a complex the self and the other relationship’ between machine (robot) and an artist, applying Jacques Lacan’s notion, the extimate, which implies that a customized drawing robot (which is programmed to move like an artist) can be both intimate and foreign, embedded and intrusive and, alien and familiar for an artist.