In modern mythmaking, the role of the robot and its AI mind is ambiguous.
For some, an autonomous machine is a saviour, promising liberation from drudgery while transcending our foibles and frailties. For others, it is a monster, threatening the termination of humanity.
In our imaginations, robots and AI form a question for our future: Are synthetic beings simulacra of our better angels, or our worst demons?
Within the framework of religious symbolism, “Cur Deus Machina” arranges this question as a triptych, a form of classic Christian painting which unfolds perspectives from a central focus, with subjects of science fiction, rather than spirituality.
This threefold format allows for a double provocation: that robots and AI may realize our greatest potentials, or our worst fears, based on their embedded understanding of what humanity itself is.
Even with the surest commandments of caution (Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics), our own answer to the mysteries of humanity and divinity will partly determine the role of supranatural simulacra.
Jonathan W. Johnson
Jonathan Johnson is an artist and aesthetic philosopher whose work investigates the crossroads ofphilosophy and religion and the conversations between East Asian and Western ideas. His research focuseson negative aesthetics, especially notions of ugliness and negation, as well as a focus on Chinese sublimeartworks (the shanshui山水paintings and writings of Guoxi郭熙, and works of penjing盆景).
