Art, AI and figuring the future

On the coming of computer-generated creativity

Featured in

  • Published 20230207
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-80-1
  • Extent: 264pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

THE 2015 SCIENCE-FICTION film Chappie was not very well reviewed, and nor is it particularly well remembered. Director Neill Blomkamp’s Pinocchio-esque tale of a sentient robot who longs to be human has also not been ‘rescued’ from the dust-covered cupboards of zeitgeist by a fanbase adamant that critics didn’t ‘get it’. In the tradition of sci-fi productions ripe with interesting ideas but lacking in execution, however, the film evokes fascinating concepts that – less than a decade since its release – have become major talking points in the real world. One scene in particular represents something that, as history would demonstrate, was just around the corner: the creation of AI-generated art. 

The chirpy titular character is a robot (voiced by Sharlto Copley) created by a British tech whiz, Dev Patel’s Deon, who believes he’s discovered how to build the ‘world’s first proper, full artificial intelligence’. Blomkamp, best-known for his Oscar-nominated apartheid analogy District 9, sets the story in another dystopian future, where policing has been outsourced to an army of robocops. But the sweet and naive Chappie – who takes seriously Deon’s instruction to never misuse his power – is a lover not a fighter with a fondness for dabbling in art. The scene begins forty minutes in when the robot does something we have rarely seen any machine do in the history of pop-culture representations. He picks up a paint brush. 

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

About the author

Luke Buckmaster

Luke Buckmaster is the film critic for The Guardian Australia and a contributor to publications including Flicks.com.au and NME. He is the author of...

More from this edition

Outside, Mona Lisa

Non-fictionWhere bushwalking is concerned, Tasmanian maps are not an authentic picture of the landscape. They’re fine if you want to stick to well-known trails, but if the track has been assigned a T4 rating it won’t be on the map. Sometimes that’s because the route is so rough it would be misleading to mark it as a track, but sometimes it’s that for a range of management and environmental purposes, the PWS just doesn’t want many walkers going there.

Wax

FictionI touch the wax of their pickaxes, then run my hand along the wax rock of the walls. One man squats a few metres away from the others, holding a pan. As I move towards him, I notice a label with descriptive text about Victoria’s gold rush, a reminder of the foundational gruesomeness of the enterprise – the colonial history of world’s fairs, or zoos, here insisting on itself in a minor carnival of the macabre. 

Cusp

FictionWe were going to visit Patience’s supervisor Callista, a tenured senior lecturer in literature and cultural studies, though her strange, ageless grace made the word senior feel like a misnomer. I knew Patience would have chided me for this, saying it showed both my ageism and internalised misogyny, so these were among the thoughts I kept to myself.

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.