Mimetic Automatic

What fascinates me about certain robots is the way they are designed to imitate the movements and abilities of animals. Their human creators have studied the motion sequences of animals for years to achieve a smooth walk or a controlled jump of a robot. Nature in that way delivers a blueprint for the seemingly inevitable next step of evolution- robotics.

In my paintings I am just following the robots ideal path of autonomy in a natural surrounding and exploring their interactions within an almost overwhelming natural habitat. What makes a living creature? Where is the difference between a conscious machine and an animal? These questions led me to some core needs and instincts of living beings like nurture, hunger, death or mating. I am confronting the robots with these strong Needs, that were key to form life on earth as we know it.

 The works are also a kind of sentimental swan song for the beauty and power of nature. Through the integration with a nature-imitating technology, they pose the question of what priorities human kind sets and how these efforts will affect the future of the planet. Because in the face of a dying planet and ecosystems, the question arises why we as a society invest immense efforts in technologies that have as a result the perfect imitation of precisely those living beings that we previously dealt with all too short-sighted. Recklessly humanity drove them and this planet's resources to the verge of extinction.

All the robots that I depict are real machines that actually existed. For me, it's not about a science fiction approach, but about bringing a real technological development into focus and making it excessible.