As athletes performed stunning sporting stunts at the Tokyo Olympics, four non-human participants were also in action. These were a team of industrial robots that had been creating art inspired by the sporting prowess at the games. 

Zen Meets Robots Meets Olympics

The installation, titled The Constant Gardeners, was the fruit of a collaboration between artist Jason Bruges and his team of technicians, software developers and 3D designers, and four  1.3-ton robots. In a press release, Bruges described the project as a “large-scale, performative robotic art installation.” During this, the team programmed the machines to delicately draw mesmerizing designs in a basalt and granite gravel garden throughout the Olympics. The aim was to combine “cutting-edge computing” with something much older, the ancient tradition of the Japanese Zen garden. These are miniature curated landscapes with carefully placed rocks, trees bushes and water features. The surrounding gravel or sand is raked into delicate patterns to represent the ripples in water. 

However, for Burges’ robots, inspiration came not from the movement of water but from the motion of Olympic athletes. Each day, the team would take video footage of the movement of athletes. This could be sprinting, swimming, gymnastics or rowing. Computers would process thousands of frames of footage capturing and tracking the movement of limbs. Algorithms then simplified the footage and generated streamlined patterns from the motion. These would then be fed to the robots who would rake out designs of swirls and undulating lines in a synthesis of athletic motion. Bruges called it “a new visual language to communicate and celebrate the motion of the professional athletes and their feats of physical prowess.”

Speed Inspired Calm

Amongst the drama and momentum of the Olympics, the robotic drawn garden provided a space of calm and tranquility. Bruges said visitors to the games queued up to look around the garden. They would contemplate the designs and film the robots at work. Bruges said it inspired a “moment of introspection” and encouraged visitors to slow down. Indeed, there is something hypnotic about the repetitive soft sounds and slow movement of the robotic arms as they rake the sand. The process and performance is as important as the finished design. 

The gardening robots created around 150 drawings during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. They showcased both “the story of an event unfolding over time” as well as shining a light on a single spectacular movement or sporting moment. 

Reimagining Robots

The project also aimed to alter preconceptions that often peg robots as threatening and monstrous. The robots Bruges used were, in fact, experiencing a new lease of life. Now retired, they were once models in a BMW car factory. After reclaiming the robots from a life of factory work, Bruges wanted to reflect on “the role of machines in our daily lives” and suggest a “new narrative around robotics, which highlights their potential for experimental creativity”. Through the gardening installation, the robots are represented as graceful and meditative. The robots are not simply there to facilitate the production of a final piece. Instead, they are the focus of the performance itself.