Research Critique 6 – Destructive Games

  • What is the main purpose of the concept of destruction in the arts?

From the article “Destructive Games: Creating Value by Destroying Valuable Physical Objects.” It clearly defines destructive games as a fun element that ends with the user’s personal product to be destroy. All of this links back to the idea of being able to justify that the game has beneficial values for the users in order for them to use.

As seen in DESU 100, The main purpose of the artists in developing this artwork is to bring a hypothesis to the question. “Are humans tempted to destroy robots?” (Ringer, Reckler). For the fact that the participants are given a choice to either destroy the robot or spare it’s life by the single push of button. What I have concluded from the artists’ perspective is that the intended outcome is to get users to command the robot to destroy itself through presenting the beneficial value by exchanging the users’ wasted time for its’ destruction. The users will be bored and frustrated to see a slow moving robot wasting their precious time thus it will make sense if they choose to vent their boredom or frustration by destroying the robot through this equivalent exchange as for what is beneficial to them is seeing the robot that wasted their time get destroyed.

  • What effect does irreversible consequences have on the participants of the artwork?

The participants will have a series of chain effect. Firstly, when they have decided to push the button of destruction, this led to the effect of self temptation to be tempted to see the process of destruction. The process of destruction will serves as a form of verification of the robot to them as it seems like the robot is complying to the participant’s order to gradually destroy itself overtime. This will make the participants feel guilty as they might be reminded that they are “murderers” who end the life of the robot even. This effect is form largely due to the fact that the robot is moving, thus it does mimic a “living thing” in the eyes of the participants during first contact and seeing how it gradually destroyed itself. However at the end of the everything, the participants will felt the effect of amusement to see a robot destroying itself which they will have no feeling associated as it is not a living thing but a programmed machine used to listen to orders.

  • What value does destruction bring to the artwork?

The idea of destruction generate the answer towards the question “Are humans tempted to destroy robots?” (Ringler and Reckter, 2012) – Yes.  Users will take the importance of machines for granted and not treat them with respect like real human who are providing the same services to them. As the destruction of DESU 100 in this activity will only bring across the message that machines exist and operate upon human command, they become mere tools to serve our needs and at the end of day, the fun of self destructing element ultimate leads to the overall destruction of machine’s appreciation and the value of machine become zero.

 

References:

Eickhoff, David and Mueller, Stefanie and Baudisch, Patrick. (2016). Destructive Games: Creating Value by Destroying Valuable Physical Objects. Retrieved April 9th, 2019 from. https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/18s2-dn1010-tut-g01/wp-content/uploads/sites/3038/2019/03/Destructive_Games.pdf

Ringer, Julia and Reckter, Holger. (February 22, 2012). DESU 100: about the temptation to destroy a robot. Retrieved April 9th, 2019 from. https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/18s2-dn1010-tut-g01/wp-content/uploads/sites/3038/2019/03/DESU100-ringler.pdf

 

One Reply to “Research Critique 6 – Destructive Games”

  1. Interesting perspective on the temptation to destroy a robot.  I think this artwork is unique such that the artist came out with a hypothesis to test out instead of creating the artwork for a more general reason.

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