Last year, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's art piece "Can't Help Myself" went viral on TikTok and Twitter. It first debuted in 2016 as a commission for the Guggenheim Museum in Venice, Italy. Now, it's the subject of widespread debate on social media platforms for the complex meaning behind this dystopian work of art.
"Can't Help Myself" was a robot arm with one specified duty and intention ---- to contain the thick, deep-red hydraulic liquid within a fixed area. When the sensors on the machine detected that the paint had strayed too far, the arms scooped it back into place, towards the middle of the area. At first, the robot would dance happily after every pulling back the spillage by swinging its arm around, many years later, it looks worn down and almost... hopeless. At this point, the spillage had become unmanageable as it grew over time, and the robot was slowly wearing itself down and becoming rusty due to the liquid.
If you analyze it on an artistic level, you'll realize the sound of rusty metal screeching sounds a lot like screams of panic. It spent its days in a never-ending cycle between sustaining life and bleeding out (The hydraulic fluid almost looked like blood for its dark maroon color). It's a metaphoric representation of the average working-class today, drowning in more and more responsibilities in an attempt to stay alive and live miserably until our inevitable death.
The arm finally stopped running just about 2 years ago, after working its entire life programmed to live out this fate.
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I remember seeing this robot on TikTok and it looked pretty sad. Just the robot scooping its own oil for hours and hours while many people are looking at it is very sad. It was like the robot was trying to keep up with itself by not letting it fall apart. I’m pretty sure the robot didn’t get any maintenance on it which is kinda sad as nobody came to fix it.
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of this piece until now, but it sounds so interesting. From a mechanical standpoint it’s cool to see machinery outside of a factory. From a philosophical standpoint it speaks volumes on the average life of the working class, like you said. I’m sure we’ve all met people who spend their life feeling like the only function they play is to work themselves until they work no more. If there is no purpose in the work they do, it’s only natural people feel this way, which is why this piece is so cool as it raises awareness of a growing generation of self programmed tools.
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