Those of a nervous disposition might want to skip this article. It’s about some of the creepiest robots ever to have walked this Earth. Apart from this one, perhaps.
Part of a new art exhibition at Art Basel Miami, the robot dogs feature unnervingly lifelike copies of the heads of some of the biggest names in tech — think Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos. Art legends Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso also appear.
But it gets weirder. Part of an exhibit called Regular Animals, the camera-equipped robots walk around a small enclosure before occasionally squatting to poop out an AI-generated Polaroid-like print depicting the people watching on. Each time this happens, an LED display on the dog’s back shows a message reading “Poop mode.”
Visitors can take one of the “poops,” or certificates, which state that the artwork has been “tested and verified as 100% pure GMO-free, organic dogshit originating from a medium adult dog anus.”
The bizarre display is the work of digital artist Mike Winkelmann — better known as Beeple — renowned for his grotesque, satirical 3D artworks and animations that blend pop culture, politics, and dystopian themes. He’s also the guy who picked up a cool $69 million through his NFT sale of Everydays: The First 5000 Days in 2021.
“What if the act of looking at art were no longer a one-way encounter, but part of a feedback loop in which the artwork observes, learns, and remembers us in return?,” Beeple says of his latest installation, in apparent reference to the robot poops.
In comments reported by The Art Newspaper, Beeple added, “This is AI reinterpreting the images and what the humanoid is seeing. There is an analogy; we’re increasingly going to view the world through AI. We’re also seeing the world through the lens of artists and tech leaders like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg who shape what we see, probably more than anybody else.”
If you’re in the vicinity of Miami and want to creep yourself out by seeing these robot dogs in person, then you’d better hurry. Regular Animals runs at Art Basel’s new Zero 10 digital art section until Sunday, December 7.