Soft Robots. The Art of Digital Breathing

Why do our technologies inspire so much hope and fear? When radical new technologies emerge, they stir up a cloud of utopian dreams and doomsday prophecies. Art is central to that conversation. In recent years, the robot has returned to contemporary art in experimental forms, signalling a shift in technology’s impact on our lives.

In the age of surveillance capitalism, technological utopias are hard to see. We find ourselves in the midst of a new technological revolution. Artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and quantum computers are being introduced into a culture where many already navigate a digital double – the virtual identity we construct on social media, freely handing over our data to giant corporations. The relationship between humans and machines is one of modernity’s defining cultural dramas, and it is intensifying before our eyes.

Soft Robots presents works by 15 artists and artist duos. From different artistic perspectives, they look at life in the new technological ecology, questioning the future we are shaping for ourselves. Many of the works were developed especially for CC’s exhibition. Created with or without new technology, they show art’s capacity to explore the world through poetry. Critically, the exhibiting artists search for the breath and soul that may be hiding in the landscapes of the future, among doppelgängers, digital avatars and seductive machines. They all insist on art as a unique space of reflection.

Several of the artists have roots in pan-Asian cultures that do not subscribe to the Western duality of natural and artificial. With its millions of gods and horizontal hierarchy, Shintoism implies the idea that all things, even robots, have a spiritual essence. The exhibited artworks move freely between these positions.

The exhibition concept is inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Nightingale (1843), written at the onset of the last great technological upheaval, the Industrial Revolution. In the fairytale, a natural nightingale that gives the emperor profound joy is replaced by a robot, a golden bird admired by everyone at court for its flawless song. Only when the mechanical bird breaks down does the real nightingale return and save the emperor’s life with its soulful singing. In the story, the machine’s song has no soul.

Many of the themes from Andersen’s tale are found in contemporary art. They are central to the artistic investigation of technology’s place in our lives. The doppelgänger evokes the fear of becoming a stranger to yourself. The robot as fetish reveals the magical thinking we carry into the future. The song and the voice are tied to the idea of the true self. And the breath marks the line between life and death. Is the soul lost in today’s mirror world? Welcome to Soft Robots.

The exhibition features works by international artists Joan Heemskerk, Alice Bucknell and Martyna Marciniak selected as part the residency program Collide – a collaborative framework between Arts at CERN and Copenhagen Contemporary (2023-2025).