The latest exhibition from Mike Winkelmann, famously known as Bepple, is a head-turner. But the showcase hasn’t caught the attention of the big tech moguls it seems to be taunting.
“We are not prepared for the future,” proclaims Mike Winkelmann, known by his moniker Bepple, on his website promoting his exhibition “Regular Animals.”
“Regular Animals,” currently showing at Art Basel in Miami Beach, claims to explore the history of portraiture, sculpture, and generative creation, while also taking a stab at leaders in big tech.
The showcase presents its audience with eight fleshy quadruped robots that resemble the Chinese robotics maker Unitree’s four-legged robot dogs.
The robot dogs are adorned with a true-to-life replica of the fleshy heads of big tech moguls. Tech CEOs, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, are all present among the collection.
Bepple has also included robot versions of famous artists such as Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and even himself.
The robots come equipped with a custom computer and printer, which are used to print non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the Regular Animals website reads.
The NFTs are “printed” in a pretty unique way. They are essentially released from the robot's artificial rectum.
It seems that NFTs are printed at different times for each robot, with the artist robots like Warhol and Picasso having a “very high” artistic output, while Musk’s robot poops out NFTs at a “very low” or “rare” rate.
The robot dogs will either release an image or a certificate of authenticity, which the audience can purchase as an NFT.
The certificate that goes with the artwork apparently states that the image has been “tested and verified as 100 percent pure GMO-free organic dogshit originating from a medium adult dog anus,” according to Futurism.
Winkelmann said that the robots utilize a combination of AI and robotics to create the exhibition, as AI is reimagining the styles of Warhol and Picasso, seemingly commenting on AI’s replication of real art, otherwise referred to as AI slop.
AI is used in the exhibition to analyze data, which the dogs collect, and then transforms the image into the style of Warhol or Picasso, Winkelmann told The Wall Street Journal.
This also seems to suggest that we’re beginning to view the world through the lens of the tech elite.
Figureheads like Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos are reshaping the narrative, convincing us that the artificial is real and then commodifying that.
This is evidenced by the robot's function.
The bots generate images by capturing moments through “their eyes.”
This data is then synthesized by AI, shat out, and purchased by the audience.
Unsurprisingly, a few of these robot dogs have already been sold at $100,000 a piece, with Jeff Bezos’ robot being the only one not to be sold at auction.
Sotheby’s chief executive, Tad Smith, supposedly bought Elon Musk’s robot dog, according to The Wall Street Journal.
While Bepple’s exhibition seems to openly criticize the tech elite, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg have seemingly chosen to ignore the exhibition.
None of these big names in tech has responded to the showcase that has taken the internet by storm.
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