Building Art Project
Robotics can enable humanity to achieve previously unattainable goals. It can also augment the way humans express themselves through art.
This building is full of people contributing in myriad ways to society. Let these art boxes, produced by different members of our robotics community, offer an eight-inch square view into their own work with robotics.
While roboticists typically take on critical and impactful problems in transportation, medicine, mobility, logistics, and manufacturing, there are many opportunities to find play and amusement. Our project hopes to inspire such work and show the varied ways one can interact with the field of robotics.
This work was installed in 2024, with support from the U-M Staff Career Development Fund. The project was led by Alyssa Emigh, Abhishek Narula, Dan Newman, and David Parkin. In these boxes, individuals and groups get to represent themselves in any manner they choose. They can decorate and program the box to show off their take on being a roboticist.
If you are a member of the community, and a box is empty, you can join the project by contacting robotics.art.project@umich.edu.
Current art layout
| Column/ Row |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | |||||||
| 2 | |||||||
| 3 | Peter Gaskell | Robotics Research Administrators | Jason Corso | M-STARX | |||
| 4 | ROBARIUM | Abhishek Narula | robot studio |
If a robot draws a picture, is it an artist?
One thing is for certain, our building is full of creativity. This collaborative work of art is full of art boxes that represent each artist’s or group’s take on what it’s like contributing to the advancement of robotics.
Our staff, students, and faculty work in a variety of roles and on a variety of problems–while some work directly on robotics, some work on funding their work, while others on maintaining the physical spaces, or a number of other related tasks. Put together, we achieve much greater results than working alone, just as the impact of this piece is greater together than separated.