Etymologically, the term ‘animation’ is derived from the Latin word animatio, from animare. Probably originating in the 16th century, ‘animation’ has two key meanings, one referring to movement and the other to bestowing life (Wells 2011). These meanings are central to how we think about animation: On the one hand, animation is about motion, about the illusion of things coming alive on screen. On the other, animation suggests the deeper idea of vitality—the possibility of bestowing life itself. When set against robotics and AI, this second meaning becomes especially provocative: in what novelways do robotics and AI bring both images and machines to life?
As the field of robotics advances we are sure to see human-robot interactions proliferate, which explains the importance of researching robotics through multiple perspectives. My focus is on robotic artworks of recent decades, incorporating both visual and HRI design, and exploring the potentials of robotic artworks as practice-based research. What is it about art and design that make it a useful contribution to this field? Design has a central role to play in the development and incorporation of robots into daily life for it is designers who shape the interfaces between humans and machines. However, since there is no right or wrong in interactive artistic installations, I argue that robot-related artworks provide a unique opportunity for viewers to engage with robots in playful, creative and otherwise inaccessible ways that allow for innovation in the complex field of robotics use and historical-cultural representation.
Robots complicate the significance of tools. They are not simply instruments, but entities tied to autonomy and agency.[1] A robot does not just work; it acts, such as Mechanical Woman Walking by Mark Galt (see Fig. 1). This action unsettles us — it appears somehow miraculous, somehow uncanny.[2] Animation and robotics share this common ground: they both involve giving form and motion to something otherwise inanimate. And as animation increasingly moves from the screen into everyday interfaces, the leap into physical space feels like a natural, if disorienting, step (since unlike animation that exists on screen, robotics exist in the same physical space as the viewer/human, thus raising confusing questions about the dichotomy of object/subject, life/death etc).
Fig. 1: Video documentation of Mechanical Woman Walking (by Mark Galt, 2014). (Mechanical Woman Walking, YouTube/Mark Galt, 08.05.2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWP-MlHmR8E).
Culturally, our imagination of robots has always been animated. Entertaining machines like the “mechanical turk” for example illustrate the shared history of machinic animism and animation. Additionally, from early cartoons to cinematic androids (such as the 1927 silent film Metropolis or the 1963 series Astro Boy, as an example), we have long rehearsed how machines should move, speak, or feel. Yet the exchange is not one-way. Robotics research sometimes draws directly from animation—using principles of gesture, character design, and timing to make machines more relatable, more expressive (Hoffman/Ju, 2014; Sandry/Gomez/Nakamura, 2021). Animation is no longer just metaphor here; it becomes a method. But what happens when the boundary between the human and the machine begins to blur, as well as the one between the human and the animated figure?[3] One way to ask this is through the concept of agency. Who, in these encounters, is acting on whom? Artistic experiments with robots open the question in unexpected ways. Rather than showcasing sleek technological prowess, many works focus on failure, vulnerability, or surprise. They push technology to its limits or misuse it deliberately, forcing us to rethink what it means to interact with something that appears alive.
Fig. 2: Video documentation of The Blind Robot (by Louis-Philippe Demers, 2012). (Louis-Philippe Demers / THE BLIND ROBOT, YouTube/KID KIBLA, 23.01.2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVmlPvTcH2o).
Consider Louis-Philippe Demers’ The Blind Robot from 2012 (see Fig. 2). Two faceless robotic arms “read” the human body through touch, as if blind. Industrial in form, the machine becomes strangely intimate through this gesture. The title grants it a disability, which encourages anthropomorphism—and with that, a kind of subjectivity. Visitors become passive objects of exploration, while the machine assumes the role of active agent. The robot’s constructed “vulnerability” through so-called “blindness” here becomes a mode of power. In other words, the robot’s blindness is the central trait assigned by the creators which dictates the human-robot interaction design, whereby the robot becomes the more active subject and agent gaining information about the comparably passive human who merely sits still and is explored physically, perhaps even objectified. Urs Fischer’s Play from 2018 (see Fig. 3) turns the ordinary office chair into a lively counterpart. A flock of chairs, fitted with sensors, seems to dance, retreat, or even chase viewers. They bump into each other, collide, and hesitate. These are not polished performers but clumsy companions. Who is observing whom? Are we choreographing the chairs, or are they orchestrating us?
Fig. 3: Video documentation about Play (by Urs Fischer, 2018). (Urs Fischer: PLAY, YouTube/ Yoav Bezaleli 07.09.2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bIEMXXaz8I).
Both works destabilize human autonomy. We are no longer the unquestioned subjects in control of passive objects. Instead, agency flickers between human and machine, subject and object. The interaction becomes reciprocal, even ambiguous. What is at stake in such encounters? First, they expose how our assumptions about technology rely on familiar roles—tools serving humans, objects waiting for activation. By breaking these expectations, the artworks act as tricksters, revealing the strangeness within the ordinary. A robot that caresses instead of labors, a chair that pursues instead of supports—such gestures unsettle precisely because they twist the familiar into something unfamiliar. Second, they remind us that the question of agency is not abstract but deeply political. Machines today observe, collect, and decide, often invisibly. When an artwork highlights this reversal—when the robot touches us, when the chair follows us—it mirrors the subtle ways in which technology already animates us in daily life.
This is where art becomes crucial. By refusing efficiency and predictability, art opens space for improvisation, ambiguity, and reflection. These are not just demonstrations of machines, but invitations for viewers to consider: What role do we play? What do we project onto machines, and what do they project back onto us? Ultimately, the convergence of animation and robotics challenges us to reconsider what it means to animate and to be animated. Is animation merely the projection of human agency onto non-human entities, or can machines themselves participate in animating us—shaping our actions, responses, and subjectivities? In these questions lies fertile ground for both artistic inquiry and academic research. As the fields of animation, robotics, and human–machine interaction continue to intersect, the exploration of agency promises not only to illuminate how we live with machines, but also to provoke deeper reflection on what it means to live, act, and interact at all.
Endnotes:
[1] For a diverse engagement with the history of robots, their philosophical connections and their relation to art, see Herath/Kroos/Stelarc (2016).
[2] The notion of the uncanny valley is often referenced in animation studies but derives from the field of robotics, see Mori (2012 [1970]).
[3] For more information about the blurred boundary between the human and the animated figure, see Levitt (2018).
References
Anderson, Michael; Anderson, Susan Leigh (eds.) (2011). Machine ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atomu; JP 1963–1966, 104 [193] Episodes, Osamu Tezuka).
Bates, Joseph (1994). The Role of Emotion in Believable Agents. Communications of the ACM, 37(7), pp. 122–125.
Herath, Damith; Kroos, Christian; Stelarc (eds.) (2016). Robots and Art: Exploring an Unlikely Symbiosis. Singapore: Springer.
Hoffman, Guy; Ju, Wendy (2014). Designing Robots with movement in Mind. Journal of Human-Robot Interaction – Special Issue on Design in HRI: Past, Present, and Future, 3 (1), pp. 91–122.
Levitt, Deborah (2018). The Animatic Apparatus Animation, Vitality, and the Futures of the Image. Winchester/Washington: Zero Books.
Mechanical Woman Walking (Mark Galt, 2014).
Metropolis (DE 1927, Fritz Lang).
Mori, Masahiro (2012 [1970]). The Uncanny Valley. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 19(2), pp. 98–100. doi: 10.1109/MRA.2012.2192811.
Play (Urs Fischer, 2018).
Sandry, Eleanor; Gomez, Randy; Nakamura, Keisuke (2021). Art, Design and Communication Theory in Creating the Communicative Social Robot ‘Haru’. Front. Robot. AI 8:577107. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2021.577107.
The Blind Robot, (Louis-Philippe Demers, 2012).
Uhrig, Meike (2018). In the Face of… Animated Fantasy Characters”. In: Holliday, Christopher; Sergant, Alexander. (eds.) Fantasy/Animation. Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres. New York: Routledge 2018.
Wells, Brian (2011). Frame of reference: Toward a definition of animation. Animation Practice, Process & Production 1(1), pp. 11–32.
Dr. Nea Ehrlich is a Senior Lecturer at the Multimedia Image and Technology Center of Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Her book, Animating Truth, on animated documentary in the 21st Century, won the Norman McLaren/Evelyn Lambart Award for Best Scholarly Monograph by the SAS. Her Co-edited book, Drawn from Life, was Runner-Up for Best Edited Collection 2020 by BAFTSS Awards. She completed her PhD in the Department of Art History at the University of Edinburgh and was a Polonsky postdoctoral fellow at Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. She is currently working on art and robotics, AI and artificial aesthetics.