Hello, Robot.

Whether in the form of delivery drones, smart sensors, or Industry 4.0 — in recent years, robotics has found its way into our everyday lives, changing them in fundamental ways. Design has a central role to play in this process, for it is designers who shape the interfaces between humans and machines. From 27 October 2017 to 15 April 2018, the museum will present a major exhibition that examines the current boom in robotics in detail for the first time. Hello, Robot. Design Between Human and Machine is a cooperation between Design Museum Gent, Vitra Design Museum and MAK Vienna. It will comprise more than 200 exhibits from the fields of design and art and will include robots used in the home, in nursing care, and in industry as well as computer games, media installations, and examples of films and literature in which robots feature. It will show the wide variety of forms that robotics takes today and at the same time broaden our awareness of the associated ethical, social, and political issues.

During the last decade, digitalisation has caused a radical redefinition of robotics. Nowadays, robots do not just build cars and washing machines or transport us in self-propelled trains from one airport terminal to another, but appear in a host of other forms, ranging from communicative domestic appliances, the so-called Internet of Things, to the self-learning algorithms in computer programmes, known as bots. Whereas robotics used to be the exclusive domain of engineers and IT experts, today designers are helping to shape the current boom in robotics in key ways, for  it is often they who decide how and where we encounter robots, what kind of relationship we form with them, and how we interact with them – or they with us.

Hello, Robot. introduces us to robots in four steps. The first section of the exhibition traces the fascination that artificial humans have long exerted on people in the modern age and looks at how popular culture has shaped our perception of robots. The second section is devoted to the field in which robotics first made a breakthrough: industry and the world of work. Whereas robots are typically perceived in this context as a threat to jobs, Hello, Robot. looks at the current debate on this subject from a number of very different perspectives. The spectrum of exhibits ranges here from classic industrial robots to an installation by the group RobotLab, in which a robot produces manifestos on a production line, thus questioning where the boundary lies between work that can be automated and human creativity. The third section of the exhibition shows how we are gradually coming face to face with the new technology – as a friend and helper in our everyday lives, in our households, in nursing care, as a digital companion, or even in cybersex. The fourth section looks at the increasing blurring of the boundaries between humans and robots – exemplified by our living in learning buildings, travelling through ‘smart cities’, or having smart sensors implanted in our bodies.

1. Have you ever met a Robot?
2. What was your first experience with a Robot?
3. Do we really need Robots?
4. Are Robots our friends or our enemies?
5. Do you trust Robots?
6. Could a Robot do your job?
7. Do you want to become a producer yourself?
8. How much do you want to rely on smart helpers?
9. How do you feel about objects having feelings?
10. Do you believe in the death and rebirth of things?
11. Do you want a Robot to take care of you?
12. Do you want to become better than nature intended?
13. Are Robots advancing evolution?
14. Would you live in a Robot?

The exhibition is a cooperation between the Vitra Design Museum, MAK – Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst/Gegenwartskunst, Wien, Vienna, and Design Museum Gent. The curators of the exhibition are Amelie Klein (Vitra Design Museum), Thomas Geisler and Marlies Wirth (MAK Vienna), and Fredo de Smet (Design Museum Gent, advising curator). The team of consultants includes international experts on the subject of robots such as Bruce Sterling, the science-fiction author and network activist; Gesche Joost, head of the Design Research Lab at the University of the Arts Berlin and a member of several bodies advising the German federal government on Industry 4.0; Carlo Ratti, architect and head of the MIT Senseable City Lab in Cambridge, USA; Sabine Himmelsbach, media art historian and director of the Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel; and Paul Feigelfeld, cultural and media researcher and coordinator of the Digital Cultures Research Lab at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg.

Hello, Robot.
27.10.2017 – 15.04.2018
Admission: € 10 | € 8 | € 6 | € 2 | € 0

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