Ana Matronic Artsnight

which this week is presented by the robot-obsessed singer Ana Matronic.

We hear a lot about how robots might affect the future of our economy,

but they are already making a big impact on art and culture.

I'm Ana Matronic, lead singer of the Scissors Sisters,

In my edition of Artsnight, I want to explore our enduring fascination

with robots across pop culture, from music to art, fiction to film.

Right now, there's never been a more exciting time for robots.

They're becoming skilled at playing complex music

and are now adept at drawing, while one artist has even become part

With advancing technology, it seems machines are now getting

in on the act and pushing the boundaries of creativity.

Are we on the verge of an artistic robot takeover?

HARRY ROBOT: The future belongs to me!

I've been obsessed by robots ever since I first clapped eyes

on them in the movie theatre when I was not even three-years-old.

I love reading about them, I love thinking about them,

I love writing about them and, man, do I want one...

The first film I saw that sealed my love for robots was, of

Nearly 40 years on, the long awaited seventh episode, The Force Awakens,

is about to open in cinemas. It heralds the arrival of a brand new

But also the return of, officially, the most beloved

robot in movie history, R2-D2.

Resembling an industrial vacuum cleaner,

R2-D2 is a curiously endearing robot and one half of a comedy double act

C-3PO: Where do you think you're going?

R2: Bleep.

C-3PO: Well, I'm not going that way.

R2: Bleep bleep.

A plucky determined character, he regularly saves the day, and

When you think of famous robots and the best there is,

I think he's the first robot with a human element to him,

He's a little robot with lots of tricks up his sleeve.

He's kind of a cheekie chappie, but also an unsung hero

I think he's kind of a little bit angry.

He wanted to do what he wanted to do,

and if the other one didn't agree, it went off on its own anyway.

Today, R2 is an icon the world over, appearing in video games

The now familiar shape of R2 was originally conceived by artist

Ralph McQaurrie and brought to life in part for the big screen by

a 3 foot 8 inch actor called Kenny Baker, operating inside a model.

Behind the scenes footage from the first film reveals how

the British special effects team built radio controlled versions

In the Force Awakens, the challenge of building

and maintaining R2 on set fell to two ordinary Star Wars fans.

This is the actual R2 from the new movie built by

the duo, amidst extreme secrecy for the biggest film release in years.

Amazingly, they were recruited from a special Star Wars fan club.

So the R2 Builders Club is a worldwide community where people

can download plans, buy parts and build an R2.

It took me five years in total to build my R2 and I was

sort of single at the time, so I didn't have any girlfriends or wives

In 2013, there was a Star Wars celebration in Essen, Germany, so in

a moment of feeling very brave, I approached Katherine Kennedy, head

of Lucasfilm, and made a comment about if they were making any films

in the UK, and if they needed any droids, get in touch.

And then, from a very cheeky comment, I was called several months

later by Lucasfilms asking if I was available to work on the new film.

It was incredible, a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I really couldn't celebrate that much as I had to keep it so quiet.

My wife knew, which was fair enough, but I've got two boys, two teenage

sons, but I decided to keep it quiet from them because of school chatter.

So I had to lie to them and make up a job I was doing!

Then the first photo broke, which JJ tweeted from the workshop.

That was the moment I told the children.

The first day we got there, I was in absolute awe

of all the talent and I felt like a very small fish in a big ocean.

During their year working on the film, Oliver

and Lee built four types of R2, with different capabilities, and were

responsible for remote controlling R2's every move and action on set.

This is what we class as the indoor version.

It's got a lower profile to make him look a bit like he's floating.

So it can spin on the spot, the dome can turn independently and because

of the drive structure we can literally put a mark there and he'll

One of the biggest concerns is it's going to fail or there's going to be

a problem and there's that constant worry that they will call action

But, luckily, it never happened, R2 worked flawlessly

and it couldn't, he couldn't, have been any better at all.

I think he's just timeless really, considering he was invented in '76,

And, you look at it now, I think he's stood the test

Hopefully, he's got a few more years ahead of him, I think.

Not only do we have world famous droid movie stars, robots today

We think of the arts - from literature to music or painting

- as innately human and what sets us apart from

But in the modern age, robots are increasingly flexing

their artistic muscles, working together with musicians and

artists to create some surprising and mind blowing new works.

I've come to the London Fine Art Studios for

So you really have to imagine you're in a life drawing class.

So you are going to look in front of you.

So I think this is my best side. Patrick

Tresset is a London-based French artist who's created five artist

robots and today I'm to be their muse!

It's hard for me not to grin ear to ear

because I'm squeeing so hard inside with excitement because I'm being

This looks a the me, looks at its paper and looks up. It gives it a

sort of life to it. I can never tell whether

its going to draw an interesting Sometimes a good surprise and

sometimes less good. This looks quite nice. They have the same

programme? They're all drawing

from different angles and all have got exactly the same software, but

I've just changed something in the nervousness of the arm and something

just after the camera and that I tried to be a painter

for almost 13 years. After 13 years, I kind

of lost my passion for painting. Everything that I did didn't

look right or didn't feel right. Then I kind of remembered that I

loved programming when I was a kid and so I started to

use computers to do what I didn't After 40 minutes,

the robot artists sign their work This one is childish. He seemed

confused. He was looking up-and-down at me a lot. Oh, I almost figured as

though it would be almost like a printer. Like an ink jet pringer

that would go line byline byline and what I associate with computers. So

that is not the case, obviously. Oh, that's one's great though. This one

is quite good. That one you can actually tell is me. Definitely.

Probably because I'm a narcissist. I like the one that looks the most

like me! So, Patrick, do I get to leave

with one of these today? I mean,

they are part of a bigger artwork so they are all kept, but what I do

is that I scan them and send them. It's not just in the world

of fine art that robots are flexing their creative muscles,

it's happening in music too. One of my favourite artists,

Tom Jenkinson - better known as Squarepusher -

has been at the cutting edge Recently, he composed an album

specially for a robot band, created I've come to meet Tom in his Essex

studio to find out more How your interest in this project

came about? I was approached by some Japanese robotists and they wanted

me to make a piece of music for their robot band to play. I couldn't

pass up that opportunity. It's not the sort of thing that happens every

day. I just had to see what that would be like. The Z machine

machines have a 22 armed drummer, a guitarist with 78 fingers and a

keyboardist that plays notes by shooting green lasers from its eyes.

Sad robot goes funny was the fist piece you composed for Z Machines.

You are composing for a 78-fingered guitarist. What it means is that you

could, for example, make chords that have a larger span than a normal

human hand could achieve. Also, the speed at which the notes can be

played, I mean, you can play over 100 notes a second. That is pretty

quick. I'm sure there are guitarists out there who would claim they can

do it. It can do it and do it consistently and doesn't get tired

it. Keeps going. It generates a particular kind sound that isn't

possible with human hands. I would imagine that composing for robots

you had a very specific place that you would want to go musically. I

wonder whethered we could make robots perform music that would be

for a listener emotionally involving.

I personally find it at points quite convincing actually.

I also encountered a sense of disappointment amongst some

people that when you tell them it's a robot playing.

It's like, oh wow, I thought it was an incredible

guitar player, this unbelievable, this super human technique

and then when you tell them it's a robot, then they actually become,

I always think that music and performing live is such

a human endeavour and so much to me lies in the idea of communication.

And it seems to me that even if we bring robots in, we'll still need

Yeah, but what's interesting, I think,

is that we're already augmenting our human performance with machinery.

I mean, if you come to one of my shows, for better or

I mean I'm playing a guitar, but it's not a guitar as you know it.

It's going through any number of different processes.

But there's other elements where there is no touch of human hand

And the fascinating thing I think is,

that I can be on the stage and yet everything that people are hearing

is generating by machines, the performance is done by the machine.

I'm just kind of babysitting the machines, and that's

And yet we can't let go of the human, because

if you took that supervisor away, no matter how superficial their job

If you take that away, suddenly it's not music performance anymore.

I look forward to hearing more from you and possibly some more

I would like some robot back up dancers, that's what I would like.

As robots get more sophisticated, one way forward is

for us humans to enhance our own abilities through technology.

I've been worshipping at the altar of all things bionic,

But inking your shoulder with computer circuitry is one thing,

actually becoming part machine quite another.

That's exactly what British born artist Neil Harbisson has done,

Neil Harbisson is officially the world's first cyborg artist

having had a technological device surgically implanted into his skull.

It's allowing him to create some unusual new art works.

I want to ask Neil about his decision to become a cyborg -

and it seems only fitting that we'll be using technology to communicate.

You are the first cyborg I am ever meeting so I am totally jazzed.

So Neil, tell me how this came about?

Well, I was born with an unusual visual condition called

acromatism, which is total colour blindness, so I see things

But I wanted to have a sense of colour.

So the only way of creating a new sense

So what I have now is this antenna implanted in my skull that allows

Exactly how does that work, how does it transmit the sound?

So the tip of the antenna has a light detector that detects the

And it transmits into a chip inside my skull that vibrates

So this vibration in my bone becomes a sound in my inner ear,

How has that changed your perception or your life?

At the beginning I had strong headaches

and I was really exhausted because I could hear colour everywhere.

So I was in a music composition constantly

But after five months it all became very, very normal.

When I actually felt cyborg was when I stopped feeling the difference

And this happened when I started to dream in colours.

And how has the antenna influenced and shaped your

Well, the antenna now allows me to, to express myself

from a new sense basically, which is the sonochromatic sense:

the sound of colour and the colour of sound.

Instead of playing an instrument, I can now play colours.

I can give colour concerts where instead of a piano I can just have

different coloured objects in front of me and then I amplify

And then I can create melodies with different coloured objects.

I can also do this with people's faces to create face concerts.

I started doing this in 2005 when Prince Charles came to

the university and he asked me, what is this?

And I explained this is an antenna to hear colours, and then I asked

That was the first sound portrait I did.

So I guess the next question is, not how do I

So your hair sounds F, a very high pitched F, and then

your lips sound F too, but it's a different scale of F, it's a low F.

If you could get close so I can hear the sound of your eyes.

It's a microtone between C and B

That's a chord, a unique musical chord.

Yes, so hearing colours has the secondary effect that when I

hear music or I hear sounds I can also paint this on a canvas.

And you have some paintings behind you.

Yes, there are several, this is New York New York.

From the first note to the last, so "start spreading

So it's note by note from the centre to the end.

So now I can listen to different artists.

For example, Andy Warhol sounds very loud.

Whereas Velasquez sounds very disturbing, sounds a bit

You should score a horror movie with paintings.

I''d be fantastic. And are you a Wi-Fi enabled hotspot?

I see it as a communication tool, as a sense.

And I think this is the next stage of internet that we

I hope you become a cyborg soon as well!

Cyborgs have long been represented in science fiction, as has

The question is, just how close are we to realising the kind

of sophisticated and clever mechanical people we've

Scientist and broadcaster Adam Rutherford, who worked

as an advisor on this year's AI hit film Ex Machina, is off to sort

In 2015, we saw a slew of blockbuster films and TV series

These portray lifelike machines with human-level consciousness

Now, this set of films are not like science fiction of the past

which were set in some distant future or a galaxy far, far away.

They present a vision of a future that's just

Chappie is a subversive romp of a film in

which a droid is reprogrammed to think and feel for itself.

Meanwhile in the dark and thought-provoking film from Alex

Garland, Ex Machina, we encounter the beautiful humanoid robot Ava.

A young coder sent to test Ava's human level intelligence

and consciousness is soon firmly in her thrall.

And in the recent hit TV series Humans, we are sold a vision

of robots that can be picked up as easily as your weekend shop

But some of these synths exhibit human like feelings and it's not

long before the real humans are forming deep relationships with

Hello Joe, I'm now securely bonded to you as my primary user.

So what's the truth behind the fiction?

Are we really that close to seeing human-like robots

I've come to visit a house in the Hertfordshire suburbs that is

Now admittedly, care-obot here doesn't

look quite as one might expect from the Hollywood movies.

But it's typical of where current technology is

at when it comes to robots designed to help around the home.

And thanks to a team at the University of Hertfordshire,

it's currently on a crash course in social interaction with humans!

Professor of Artificial Intelligence Kerstin Dautenhahn is in charge

Kerstin, so we're in this suburban house, but it's got robots in it.

When we started we did human robot interaction studies

You see when they come in, and it look like a normal house from

better. We equipped it with robots, lots of sensors, and lots of

technology, but it's still more similar to a normal home that you

We see a lot of robots in films, with artificial

How do they affect people's expectations about what real world

robots are actually like and what they are capable of?

Science fiction movies have a huge impact.

So for example, people think that robots, of course,

can not only think, not only have the AI as human beings

too, but they can also do lots of physical tasks very, very easily.

It should not be difficult for a robot to load and unload the

dishwasher or fold clothing, but teaching this to robot is a very,

very hard. As well as carrying out studies with

Care-o-bot - to assist elderly people

in the home - Kerstin's team has built a humanoid robot called Kaspar

to help children with autism. It would be disingenuous

of me not to point out he's pretty A lot of adults who see him

for the first time give exactly that Kaspar doesn't have

a complex real human face. It's simplified in a way

so that children with autism can Kaspar has several

autonomous behaviours. They are, for example,

triggered by touch senses. So let me just try to tickle

its feet. So these are all little,

simple games, but for a child with autism, these simple games help them

understand the basic principles. Because in the real world,

it's so complex that it's difficult for them to concentrate

on the fundamental things that are important, but they can do it when

they interact with such a robot. So how long is it going to be

before we see multi-tasking And how long is it going to be

before we see, you know, proper androids,

the kind that we see in the movies? It is still a big challenge but I

would expect in five to ten years time to see these systems in

people's homes - maybe not of the complexity of the ones you see in

science fiction, but in the sense of a system that can do a variety of

tasks very well in order to help. When it comes to the science-fiction

robots, the androids, from a technological point of view, we are

talking about hundreds of years will stop.

And I think we are certainly talking about hundreds

of years to see these wonderful, versatile, human-like robots that

are shown in the movies and that are almost undistinguishable

That's all from me and my new best friend here.

Well, the fourth named storm of the season

is bearing down upon us overnight and into tomorrow,