Human Robot
Coming September 2025 · In partnership with Urban Dream Brokerage
In Human Robot, the artist becomes the machine. This upcoming two-week live performance is my second collaboration with Urban Dream Brokerage and returns me to the shopfront as both worker and artwork. Over twelve consecutive workdays, I will paint six large-format canvases, strictly following instructions generated by an evolving AI system.
Every 15 minutes, a photograph is taken of the work in progress and sent to the AI, which analyses the image and responds with new commands—reversing the traditional relationship between artist and tool. The human becomes a labouring executor; the machine becomes the eye and the mind.
A large window-facing screen displays Virtual Mark Antony, an animated avatar of the AI itself, talking viewers through the process and offering insight into its decisions. Meanwhile, the real human robot labours behind the glass—working to a rigid schedule of painting, rest, and interaction. As each piece is completed, it’s hung in the space, gradually forming an exhibition-in-progress.
Part performance, part provocation, Human Robot is a live negotiation between authorship and automation, repetition and resistance. It highlights the exhaustion and vulnerability of creative labour under digital systems, while also leaning into absurdity, spectacle, and play.
This project is currently crowdfunding via PledgeMe under the campaign Feed the Robot — where supporters can back the work and even secure one of the six paintings created during the performance.
