Artist Statement

Autonomous robot

Some Remarks On Adelbrecht

I love science, technology, computers – Adelbrecht is all of that. Adelbrecht functions autonomously and has some knowledge about the world. He is not intelligent, in that he can’t  adapt to an environment that changes unpredictably. People often ask me: “Why don’t you use a faster processor” or “Wouldn’t neural nets make him really intelligent?”. To be a work of art, none of this is necessary. He needs not to be as intelligent and as powerful as can be, he needs to be interesting.

The making of Adelbrecht has been, and still is, much more difficult than I thought. Working as an independent artist in a not well known field is a tricky business, given limited means to do research (even though I have received substantial funding from the Dutch Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture and much help of all sort from institutions and people).

On Art: A work of art always is ‘about something’ it tells things without or within words: implicitly. What it implies and how — through which technolgies and in which style — is up to the individual artist. ART HAS NO DUTY.
Implicit goals as opposed to explicit goals, is the difference between ‘art’ and what we name the rest of things people wish to do.
A work of art can be said to have quality: how much it grabs the beholder, how well it implies. Quality does NOT determine if something is art. (A bad cigar still is a cigar.)
Except when using one’s own body or found and not changed objects, art can only be established through technology, be it charcoal, paper, paint, welding, or electronics. From the viewpoint of art, there is no difference between a painting and a work made from computers.

• Martin Spanjaard, The Netherlands