Examining the intersection of robots and humans with curator Amelie Klein

Have you ever met a robot? What was your first experience with a robot? Do we really need robots? Are robots our friends or enemies? Do you trust robots? Could a robot do your job? Do you want to become a producer yourself? How much do you want to rely on ‘smart’ helpers? How do you feel about objects having feelings? Do you believe in the death and rebirth of things? Do you want a robot to take care of you? Do you want to live inside a robot? Do you want to become better than nature intended? Are robots advancing evolution?

These are the 14 questions that greet visitors, across Vitra Design Museum’s gallery space, as part of their ongoing exhibition Hello, Robot. Design between Human and Machine. Adding to the rich display of concepts, prototypes, physical models, and visual installations, the questions, hanging from the roof of the many galleries in the museum, urge visitors to not only observe and absorb, but also contemplate and engage—with elusive ideas, displayed showcases, and other guests at the exhibition.

The exhibition is a result of a collaborative effort between the Vitra Design Museum, MAK–Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, and the Design Museum Gent. Curated by Vitra Design Museum’s Amelie Klein, MAK’s Thomas Geisler and Marlies Wirth, under the curatorial consultancy of Design Museum Gent’s Fredo de Smet, the exhibition design was undertaken by the interior design practice EMYL from Basel, Switzerland.

Hello, Robot. first presented at Germany’s Vitra Design Museum in 2017, returned to its original locale after travelling across the globe, for five years. From MAK in Vienna, Austria to Design Museum Gent in Belgium, and Victoria & Albert Museum in Dundee, Scotland to Hyundai Motorstudio Busan in South Korea and Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing in China, the exhibition has scaped geographical boundaries to engage in a dialogue with people from myriad disciplines and nationalities. In an attempt to better understand the process of curating and executing the exhibition, as well as its intent and the reaction emitted by audiences, STIR engaged in a dialogue with one of the curators, Amelie Klein. Talking about the model of travelling exhibitions, Klein shares, “It is not a sustainable model and method. However, building the exhibition at a new spot and then discarding the materials after the show is also not sustainable. This is something that museums and galleries across the globe must rethink.”

The showcase at the museum, comprising more than 200 exhibits, includes animated robots writ in our mind through popular culture references, as well as examples of smaller, almost invisible objects that perform roles worthy of accreditation under robotics. In doing so, the exhibition helps visitors declassify robots—from bulky models capable of duelling and wrestling to monitoring devices that can store data and use it as a weapon or a useful tool. It separates visitor’s understanding of technology in context to their exposure to science fiction representations of robots, by introducing discursive examples and narratives from real life. This helps augment our senses, to perceive the everyday mechanisms that are, in fact, robotic in nature. Hence, it demonstrates the many ways in which technology has already penetrated our lives. It is not a mammoth that will emerge from the horizon, in the near future, but instead, is like diminutive terrestrial creatures that creep up on us slyly.

Spanning video games, multimedia installations, examples from comics, films and literature, as well as experiments conducted with technology, Hello, Robot. traces the influence of robots in all spectrums of our lives. From cars and washing machines to ATMs, drones, mobile phones, driverless trains and electrical and electronic homeware tools, automation has seeped into almost all domains of life. Some of us are often resistant to technology taking over our lives—perhaps due to its weighty representation in popular culture. It is, however, important to acknowledge the many ways in which it has already permeated our lifestyle. In reading through the examples of technology serving as a tool, throughout history, we can begin to establish an equanimous relationship with it, devoid of extreme proclamations that either shun its progress or welcome it with absolution.

Hello, Robot. Design between Human and Machine is spread across the museum, in four sections. While the first part of the exhibition engages visitors with a display of popular robotic prototypes such as R2-D2 from Star Wars and the four-legged Boston Dynamics robot Spot, the second portion of the showcase is dedicated to raising pertinent questions about the boundaries that separate or don’t separate human creativity and automation of work. The third part demonstrates man’s evolving relationship with new technologies, and its subsequent impact on interpersonal relationships and the fourth and last leg of the showcase ponders on the many ways in which man and robotics are meeting, interacting, and influencing each other. The Eggshell Pavilion, developed by Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich, on display outside the museum, demonstrates the use of eggshell production technology.

In placing question prompts in close proximity to technological artefacts, the exhibition presents the many ways in which robotics has found a space in our homes, offices, public spaces, and minds. It manages to oscillate between discourses that envision utopia and those that fear a dystopia—fetching explanations from both halves and parlaying them. It urges us, on the one hand, to question the ethics of artificial intelligence interfering and aiding one’s craft, art, and innovation, and on the other, prompts us to contemplate the association of AI-based interventions with rationale and individualism. 

Click on the banner video to listen to excerpts of the discursive discussion with Amelie Klein.

Hello, Robot. Design between Human and Machine is on view at Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany, from September 24, 2022 to March 5, 2023.