Distanced

A unique chance to experience Patrick Tresset’s new Human Study #1, Distanced.

In this performance, artist Laila Hajbi sits in front of their computer in a Google Meet session, and their image is transported into the artwork in Patrick’s studio in Brussels to be drawn by an RNP robot.

During the session, a video artwork is generated from a visualization of the robot’s internal processes and live-streamed.

Human Study #1 is an installation where the human becomes an actor. In a scene reminiscent of a life drawing class, the human takes the sitter’s role to be sketched by a robot. The robot, a stylised minimal artist, is only capable of drawing obsessively. Its eye focuses on the subject or looks at the drawing in progress. The drawing session lasts for 15 minutes, during which time the human cannot see the drawing in progress. The sitter only sees the robot alternating between observing and drawing, sometimes pausing.

The sitter is in an ambivalent position, at the mercy of the robot’s scrutiny, but also as an object of artistic attention. Although immobile, the model is active in keeping the pose, for spectators the sitter is an integral part of the installation.

The RNP robot was originally developed by Patrick Tresset to palliate a debilitating painter’s block. It could be seen as a creative prosthetic or a behavioural self-portrait. Even if the way the robot RNP draws is based on Tresset’s technique, its style is not a pastiche of Tresset’s, but rather an interpretation influenced by the robot’s characteristics.

*An earlier version of this installation was produced for the 2020 edition of the South African National Arts Festival, for Creativate curated by Lauren Fletcher.

About the artist

Patrick Tresset is a Brussels-based artist who, in his work, explores human traits and the aspects of human experience. His work reflects recurrent ideas such as embodiment, passing time/time passing, childhood, conformism, obsessiveness, nervousness, the need for storytelling, and mark-making. He is best known for his performative installations using robotic agents as stylized actors that make marks and for his exploration of the drawing practice using computational systems and robots. He attended Goldsmiths College, London, for a master’s degree and then an MPhil in arts and computational technologies. Aside from his artistic practice, in 2013, he was a senior visiting research fellow at Konstanz University and is currently an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Canberra. His past research work is referenced in more than a hundred academic publications in various fields (computational graphics, drawing, psychology, AI, robotics).

His works have featured in numerous media, including; Art press, Art review, Beaux art, Frieze, Arte, Form, Wired, Vice, BBC, DeWelle, Le monde, New York Times.

This performance came as a collaboration between The British Council Jordan, FutureEverything UK and artmejo.