Robotic dogs with Musk, Bezos, and Picasso faces grab attention at Art Basel

Miami (USA).- The American digital artist Beeple unleashed a "pack" of robotic dogs at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair with hyperrealistic heads of tech magnates and art legends such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, and Mark Zuckerberg. The installation titled 'Regular Animals' captured attention at the fair that was inaugurated this Friday and continues until Sunday. The mechanical dogs with the heads of these humans wander around a kind of pen, where they walk, blink, take photos of the public and defecate photographic prints or NFTs, depending on the "dog" in question.

Each head was crafted by mask artisan Landon Meier, with a realism as disturbing as it is fascinating.

The impressions that "expel" carry styles that refer to 20th-century art: the 'Warhol-dog' generates images in a pop key, Picasso's distorts them in cubist geometries, Musk's bets on a futuristic black and white, and Zuckerberg's flirts with the aesthetics of the metaverse that the creator of Facebook pushed. Not everyone generates art. The 'dog-Bezos', for example, does not produce prints: its inclusion responds rather to its symbolic weight "as a figure that defines what millions see, consume and buy", explains the Beeple team, the alias of the visual creator Mike Winkelmann. When robots sit down to "do their business", the public watches with a mixture of fascination and horror. Some describe the experience as "creepy" or "as twisted as it is brilliant". "Now we see the world through the eyes of algorithms and these technological figures. Before, it was the artists who shaped perceptions, now it's the code magnates," Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, declared to the press.

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For those looking to take a souvenir, the "dogs" will expel 1,028 impressions, some (256) with a QR code that allows them to be claimed as NFTs. This is a piece between satire, criticism, and performance: a mechanical beast that vomits reflections on fame, identity, digital capitalism, and the role of art in an era dominated by algorithms.

The banana

Art Basel Miami Beach has been the scene on multiple occasions of works that spark viral debates. The most iconic was the banana taped to the wall with silver tape by the artist Maurizio Cattelan, sold in several editions and consecrated as a symbol of the absurd and conceptual art.

In the past, there were also installations that questioned consumption, fame, and the limits of art, such as the solid gold toilet or the portraits created with artificial intelligence before the topic became massive. In that context, Beeple's robotic dogs join a long tradition of works that use humor and "shock" to interrogate contemporary visual culture. Art Basel Miami Beach is considered the most influential contemporary art event in the United States, bringing together galleries from over 35 countries, collectors, celebrities, and creators every December, turning the city into a global epicenter of trends. The fair combines its main section at the Miami Beach Convention Center with dozens of satellite exhibitions that occupy hotels, beaches, and entire neighborhoods.