For many people, the term “robotic art” would bring to mind machines in front of easels, attempting to paint what they have been programmed to paint, but perhaps failing because they do not have the creativity that is latent in the creators who programmed them. However, as the editors of Robots and art explain early on in the book, this is not what they mean by the term robotic art. Instead, in robotic art, “the art is not in the machine, the machine is the art.” So first and foremost, it is worth noting that this book deals with robots as art, not as artists. With this in mind, Robots and art is a collection of 15 essays on key ideas and artwork within the field of robotic art. The essays are organized into four key themes--otherness, explorations, embodiment, and interaction--along with six more chapters covering the prologue, history of the field, and epilogue.

The three chapters comprising the history of the field are, unfortunately, amongst the driest and most unengaging of all of the chapters. The only slight exception to this is Jean-Paul Laumond’s essay, “Robotics: Hephaestus Does It Again,” where the author uses a somewhat convoluted analogy to the Greek myth of Hephaestus to argue that one of the key attributes of robotics is that of “motion autonomy.” Unless the reader wants to know more about the history of robots and art, this section can be skipped without having a detrimental effect on understanding the remainder of the book.

The first key theme that this book tackles is that of otherness, which relates to the way in which robotic art delineates the subjects, the robots themselves, as being “other” from the observers. Of the five chapters in this section, the essay by Elizabeth Jochum and Ken Goldburg entitled “Cultivating the Uncanny: The Telegarden and Other Oddities” was for me the most interesting. In many ways, this chapter is the ideal summary of the key ideas within this section because it directly addresses the “uncanny” nature of robotics. Here, uncanny is used not only in the Freudian sense of the word, where it is an awareness of awareness, but also in the Morian sense of the word, where it relates to the affinity felt toward an entity (in this case robotic) and its human likeness.

The second theme of explorations is loosely based around the idea that work within the field of robotic art can be seen as an exploration into the unknown, with no set research goal. Instead, robotic art as an idea is found during this exploration. Interestingly, it is the essay that breaks with the central theme of this book that I found most engaging out of the three chapters in this section: “Machines That Make Art” by Leonel Moura. In this essay, Moura describes two robots that have been used to create original pieces of art, where the focus is more on the finished work than on the robot itself. Although this chapter does not summarize the section in the same way that Jochum and Goldburg’s does for otherness, it is still the most readable of the three chapters on explorations.

The theme of embodiment explores ways in which the entire robotic system, including its control mechanisms, can be given physical form. In many ways, the four chapters in this section are the most uncomfortable and unnerving because it is here that we begin to confront the Uncanny Valley. Kohei Ogawa and Hiroshi Ishiguro’s essay on “Android Robots as In-between Beings” is perhaps the epitome of this unease. The chapter examines two humanoid robots, their development, and the ways in which they have been used in artwork. The description of machines that mimic humans in both appearance and behavior without any discussion of the societal or ethical implications is somewhat concerning. This concern is also seen in Guy Ben-Ary and Gemma Ben-Ary’s essay within the same section. Although at least Ary and Ary do give a slight nod to ethics with a single paragraph asserting that art should play an “important role” in determining the ethical considerations that encompass human/robot interaction.

The final key theme is that of interactions. The three essays within this section are concerned with interactions, both between robots and robots as well as between robots and humans. Of particular interest within this section is Mari Velonaki and David Rye’s essay on “Designing Robots Creatively.” Here, the authors show through four case studies the importance of interactions as part of the design of creative robots. I especially liked the discussion of the Diamandini robot, which was displayed at the Victoria and Albert museum in London (although this could be because the authors provide a quantitative, as opposed to subjective, evaluation of the different ways in which the public interacted with the robot).

I was left unsure why the essay within the epilogue appeared as an epilogue as opposed to a chapter within the embodiment section. As it stands, the essay feels somewhat out of place, and I was disappointed to see that the book simply finished with no concluding chapter. It would have greatly improved the book if the editors had provided some kind of conclusion that pointed toward possible future pathways within this field. Instead, the book simply ends during an essay by the artist Stelarc on his own work, leaving the reader with a feeling that it is somehow unfinished.

Overall, this book provides an interesting and at times engaging overview of some of the work being undertaken within robotic art. As you would expect from a book about art, the quality of the printing is excellent with glossy pages and full-color figures throughout. I believe that the book will find its primary audience within the artistic rather than the scientific community because the discussion is about the art form rather than the technology. However, for those wanting to know more about this field, the questions that it raises, and the problems that it faces, this book will prove invaluable.