human robot

By Mark Anthony Smith in collaboration with AI driven Virtual Mark Smith

Location: TBC

Dates: Opening September 15th, showing until September 28th, 9.30am-5.30pm daily

Crowdfunding: A PledgeMe campaign is your chance to support by feeding the robot, writing a prompt, or even owning one of the six final paintings - https://www.pledgeme.co.nz/projects/8561-human-robot-feed-the-robot-by-mark-antony-smith

Project website: Human Robot

Human Robot is a live performance-painting project by artist Mark Antony Smith, taking place in a shopfront window in central Wellington. Over 12 days Mark becomes the “Human Robot,” executing detailed painting instructions generated by a custom-trained AI assistant, Virtual Mark Antony.

This strange duet of human labour and machine direction unfolds in public view. The performance plays with ideas of memory, authorship, productivity and exhaustion—asking who really gets to be called creative in an era of intelligent machines.

Audiences can see the painting take shape in real time, hear instructions, watch recordings and interact with the AI via screens and QR codes. You will be able to communicate with Virtual Mark Smith, an AI generated version of the artist. You will be able to give prompts that will then be communicated to the artist, who will then paint as instructed by their AI self. The public can also take a more passive approach & simply watch Smith paint, something not everyone gets to watch as spectators, the manual labour of the artist.

Mark Antony Smith is a Te Whanganui-a-Tara-based artist working across painting, animation, installation, and performance. His practice navigates memory, authorship, and the labour of making — often exploring what is lost, distorted, or reimagined when narratives pass through machines, time, or other people. Mark has exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent projects including Echoes of Tomorrow, Black Dog: Failure, and The AI Show — a durational performance interrogating AI, obedience, and creative agency. His work frequently plays with architectural space, speculative storytelling, and absurdist humour, merging emotional immediacy with structured experimentation. He is interested in what happens when control is given up, and when intuition clashes with instruction. The project builds on Mark’s 2025 exhibition The AI Show from Meanwhile Gallery.