Encountering Robotic Art: The Social, Material, and Temporal Processes of Creation with Machines

2025-02-03

AI Summary

This paper addresses the underexplored domain of collaborative creativity between humans and robots in artistic practice, investigating how social interaction, material affordances, and temporal dynamics jointly shape human-robot co-creation. Employing qualitative methods—including semi-structured interviews with robot artists and phenomenological analysis integrated with process modeling of human-robot co-creation—the study reveals, for the first time, that creativity emerges dynamically through spatiotemporal co-construction among artists, robots, and audiences. It proposes a novel paradigm for robotic art-making grounded in “socially aware, materially sensitive, and process-oriented” design. Three HCI-oriented design implications are distilled, advancing theoretical understanding and practical implementation of creative human-robot collaboration in media arts, digital fabrication, and embodied computing. (132 words)

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Computational Creativity
• Humans and AI: Human-Computer Interaction

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Research challenges in human and human-AI computation
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

Robots extend beyond the tools of productivity; they also contribute to creative activities. Although typically defined as utility-driven technologies designed for productive or social settings, the role of robots in creative settings remains underexplored. This paper examines how robots participate in artistic creation. Through semi-structured interviews with robotic artists, we analyze the impact of robots on artistic processes and outcomes. We identify the critical roles of social interaction, material properties, and temporal dynamics in facilitating creativity. Our findings reveal that creativity emerges from the co-constitution of artists, robots, and audiences within spatial-temporal dimensions. Based on these insights, we propose several implications for socially informed, material-attentive, and process-oriented approaches to creation with computing systems. These approaches can inform the domains of HCI, including media and art creation, craft, digital fabrication, and tangible computing.

Problem

• Explores robots' role in artistic creation
• Analyzes robots' impact on art processes
• Proposes socially informed creation approaches

Innovation

• Robots in artistic creation
• Social-material-temporal dimensions
• HCI-informed creative processes