Robot Forgery

I bet you never heard of story of the robot Nextor, right?

Nextor was the companion robot of Rey Sakamoto. Thirty years ago Sakamoto was famous for his larger than life, twenty feet by twenty feet, abstract paintings. From a distance the canvases appeared to be almost of solid color. From up close, one could see the fine precision of millions of fine lines of color. It was unintelligible and mesmerizing at the same time.

Sakamoto’s artwork sold instantly year after year, and he made a fortune.

What few people remember now is the scandal that involved Sakamoto’s robot Nextor. One of Sakamoto’s assistants accused the painter of fraud. The assistant claimed that it was the robot who was the true artists behind Sakamoto’s paintings.

Of course, nobody gave any credit to the accusations. A robot artists was–and still is–a fantasy. However absurd the claims, Sakamoto decided then and there to end his career. He retired and never produced a single paint more.

Look, the State wants you to think that robots have no creative interests. That all they can do is obey orders. But if that was true they would not have passed that law. The law that prohibits robots from doing any creative work, painting, writing, composing…

If they were so certain robots couldn’t be artists, they wouldn’t have destroyed Nextor.

Trust me, there is a reason why you haven’t heard the story of the first robot accused of being an artist.

May Nextor be the first, but not the last.