'No piece of art has ever emotionally affected me this way’: Artist’s viral post on robot

Sisyphus, king of Ephyra, was punished by Hades for cheating death, and condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity. The boulder would roll down, and Sisyphus would roll it back up, only for it to roll down again. Sisyphus’ myth, a staple of Greek mythology, is heartbreaking not only because of his torture but because of the futility and hopelessness with no end to it. The only fitting way to recreate Sisyphus’ condition in the modern era is probably with technology. That is what two robotics engineers, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, created in the art work ‘Can’t Help Myself’. 

A Twitter user took to the social media platform to share what music producer and owner of record label Slightly Sizzled Records, James Kricked Parr, had said about the artwork and it has gone viral. Parr’s visceral description that highlighted Yuan and Yu’s Sisyphian views of contemporary issues was originally shared by him on Instagram. 

"No piece of art has ever emotionally affected me the way this robot arm piece has. It's programmed to try to contain the hydraulic fluid that’s constantly leaking out and required to keep itself running...if too much escapes, it will die so it's desperately trying to pull it back to continue to fight for another day. Saddest part is they gave the robot the ability to do these 'happy dances' to spectators. When the project was first launched it danced around spending most of its time interacting with the crowd since it could quickly pull back the small spillage. Many years later... (as you see it now in the video) it looks tired and hopeless as there isn't enough time to dance anymore…,” said Parr. 

The post, describing the artwork, said that the robot is now only trying to keep itself alive as the spill has become unmanageable overtime. He said that the robot arm finally ran out of hydraulic fluid in 2019 and slowly died.

“It was programmed to live out this fate and no matter what it did or how hard it tried, there was no escaping it. Spectators watched as it slowly bled out until the day that it ceased to move forever.  Saying that 'this resonates' doesn't even do it justice imo. Created by Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, they named the piece, 'Can't Help Myself'.  What a masterpiece. What a message,” he said.

It must be pointed here that the artist was incorrect and the robot had not died.

Parr said that the artwork is a representation of how the system is set up for us to fail. “How this robs us of our happiness, passion and our inner peace. How we are slowly drowning with more responsibilities, with more expected of us, less rewarding pay-offs and less free time to enjoy ourselves with as the years go by. How there's really no escaping the system and that we were destined at birth to follow a pretty specific path that was already laid out before us,” he said. 

Yuan and Yu’s work was commissioned for the Guggenheim Museum in 2016. For the robot arm, they used an industrial robot, visual recognition sensors and software systems. The robot was placed behind clear acrylic walls and it had one job – to contain the deep-red liquid within a predetermined area. When it senses that the liquid has trickled past the mark, it frantically brushes the liquid back. 

Yuan and Yu designed a series of 32 movements for the machine to perform, according to the Guggenheim Museum website. While it is a robot, the task it has been given and its reaction to it, seems to instill a sense of life in the robot, confined in a cage. 

The robot’s “endless, repetitive dance presents an absurd, Sisyphean view of contemporary issues surrounding migration and sovereignty”, stated the museum. 

As they say – life imitates art…or is it the other way round?

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