The Eccentric Coalescence of Science and Art

A while back, this post came up on my Instagram feed, amidst the usual flood of STEM related (getting force fed calculus, computer science, or other STEM things is very effective against doomscrolling) accounts I typically follow. It was interesting, but I didn’t think much of it, simply sending it to a friend

and then taking it as a sign to get back to studying.

It is an interesting piece, and now just because it merges something people may be tempted to call "soulless," robotics, with art which thrives from the literal blood sweat and tears people pour into their pieces. In a way, each piece of art someone creates leaves with a piece of themselves in it. Art feels fundamentally human.

In the post itself, a student who is studying at NYU Shanghai reached out to ask an engineer if it would be possible for a robot to be sent to them temporarily for a performance from an art class they are a part of. The robot arrived. While this isn’t the first time someone has combined robotics and art (see "Sun Yuan and Peng Yu: Can’t Help Myself"), I think that this instance shows the way that fields merging might not require insane funding. As interdisciplinary creations become more common, I think that different types of collaborations will also become more accessible.

The ask must have seemed impossible to the poster at the time. I think that it’s just like how Wegener’s theory of continental drift was originally rejected, or how Kepler (and Copernicus and Aristarchus) had their idea of a heliocentric solar system denied. We all consider this common knowledge now, but when it's the start of something new, it can feel impossible and outrageous.

Inherently, I think that art is about being crazy and insane and weird, because it’s a way of expressing not just our thoughts but how we process the world as individuals.

I’ve included an image from the Instagram reel of 1nska working on the robot.