Roomba Art: Lower East Side Gallery Displays Art Made By Vacuum

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — A Lower East Side art gallery is opening a new show on Friday that features collaborative work between a painter and her Roomba.

The artist Addie Wagenknecht used the famous vacuuming robot to make machine-assisted paintings for a new exhibit at bitforms gallery, 131 Allen St. To create the works, Wagenknecht modified a Roomba so that it could paint on canvas. While the Roomba painted, Wagenknecht sat on the canvas naked.

The vacuum "relentlessly attempts to navigate around her body because it is designed to continue on a trajectory until the entire area has been mapped by its algorithm. The result is a void in the shape of a female form surrounded by the blue strokes of the robot," according to a statement from the gallery.

The exhibition, titled "Alone Together," is Wagenknecht's second solo exhibition at bitforms, and is a culmination of her focus on gendered labor and technology, the gallery said.

"The artist body actively claims the canvas, the artifact of her presence is thus void of color. Female bodies typically perform as an element of exhibitionism, so much so that seems to define the contemporary experience of being female," Wagenknecht wrote in an artist statement about her work. "What shape does the expressions of female agency take if the female body is not available for domestic labor or sex?"

The exhibition will be open through Feb. 11.

Image credit: Courtesy of bitforms gallery