On Miami Beach, a pack of dog-robots roams the world’s richest art fair, Art Basel: this is the latest provocation by Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, the digital artist who rose to prominence for the historic sale of his NFT collage Everydays - The first 5000 days in 2021 for $69 million. The installation, titled Regular Animals, consists of six robotic units, each mounted on a quadruped commercial platform equipped with sensors and cameras. What makes the work particularly unique are their heads: these are hyper-realistic platinum-cured silicone sculptures, created by Landon Meier, that reproduce the likenesses of figures that significantly shape the contemporary world, both in art and technology. The faces include tech giants Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, joined by art icons such as Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. Beeple himself is included in the group, with two robots sporting his glasses and haircut.
As the robotic dogs run or rest on their hind legs, cameras built into their heads continuously capture surrounding scenes. This stream of data is processed in real time by artificial intelligence. At regular intervals, the robots stop and lean back to literally “defecate” an art print from their rear end. During this act, a small LED screen on the back of each robot illuminates the words “POOP MODE.”
The output of each robot is a stylized print, produced by a compact printer. Each print is linked to the identity on the robot’s mask and reflects a particular “temperament” or cognitive style. For example, the images generated by the robot wearing Zuckerberg’s head are reminiscent of the aesthetics of the Metaverse, while Musk’s robots present a black-and-white robotic appearance. Robots representing historical artists align with their styles: Picasso produces geometric images reminiscent of cubism, and Warhol prints in a pop art style. Beeple himself is associated with a “dystopian futurism.” Bezos is the only exception in the group: his robot does not make prints, but, as Beeple explained, his inclusion was necessary because he is “another person shaping the way we see the world.”
The conceptual core of Regular Animals is a direct critique of the algorithmic control exercised by the titans of technology. Winkelmann made it clear that while worldview used to be interpreted through the eyes of artists, today, people like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk control extremely powerful algorithms that unilaterally decide what we see and how we see it, making their perspective our primary source of information. The work thus simulates how reality is filtered and reinterpreted through the lens of powerful algorithms and artificial intelligence, suggesting that we will increasingly see the world through the eyes of AI and robotics.
The prints are not simply physical works. The project plans to distribute a total of 1,028 prints. Some of these (specifically 256) include codes that allow visitors to claim NFTs (non-fungible tokens), thus linking the physical work to a token registered on a blockchain. Beeple believes that the blockchain is an excellent tool for recording these machine-generated “memories.”
In keeping with the satirical and provocative nature of the work, the physical photos produced by the robots are accompanied by a warning label. This label describes them as an “Excrement Sample” and contains a statement that the work has been “tested and verified as 100% pure, GMO-free.” Some warning labels were aimed specifically at collectors, suggesting that the object could be “disgusting to most patrons of the arts” and potentially cause “uncontrollable erections in degenerate art collectors.”
The installation was exhibited in the Zero 10 section of Art Basel, a curated space dedicated to art practices of the digital age. Despite the grotesque and disturbing nature of the work, the public reaction was very strong and generated much discussion. Financial interest in Regular Animals was immediate: all of the robotic specimens, except the one with Bezos’s head that was not initially for sale, were purchased by private collectors for $100,000 each already during the VIP preview, although the new owners allowed them to remain on display. The robots moreover are designed to cease their primary function of recording images and storing them on blockchain after three years, giving the sculptures a metaphorical end, although they retain their basic motor functions.
With Regular Animals, Beeple continues his interest in bold and complex art projects that he could not have done before his great success. The artist suggests that the work anticipates a future trend: according to him, sculptures will become dynamic “living things” with anthropomorphized features to which society will attribute emotions as robots gain more power. The installation, placed in an exhibition setting that regularly attracts the world’s richest collectors and sees seven-figure art transactions, offers crucial food for thought on the increasingly blurred boundary between reality, technology and the control of global narratives.
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| Beeple dog-robots that defecate art are all the rage in Miami: sold for $100,000 |
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