The Birth of Robocritic

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us here today. I know that you have all heard a great deal about our work here at Advanced Ideas Mechanics, and our reputation is not exactly squeaky clean. Those unfortunate battles with the Avengers, the rumours that we are planning to dominate the entire world through our technology, the rather stupid outfits we wear in our public appearances. And yet, today, I hope that we'll prove how A.I.M is working towards a better future for everyone.

In a moment, we shall unveil our latest, most powerful creation: Robocritic. As Robocop was touted as the future of law enforcement, we believe that Robocritic will redefine the critical appreciation of art. A team of scientists has been hard at it, working out definitions of performance, contemporary dance, electronic composition and aesthetics for the past seven years: their dedication has reached a culmination with Robocritic.

Like many scientists, we were inspired not by what already existed - a cohort of professional, serious professionals examining the arts from multiple perspectives - but a cheap science fiction film. It's well known that Star Trek's Spock (that's Mister, not Doctor - Dr Spock was an anarchist expert on parenting) inspired a generation of physicists to research outre ideas and write filthy stories about Captain Kirk and his science officer. Now A.I.M is proud to admit that a 1980s action thriller, with a side serving of social satire, has encouraged us to build something neither wholly human nor completely machine - but totally rad.

Robocritic was designed around three prime directives: to address all art forms and discuss their commonalities; to ceaselessly seek answers to questions previously considered irrelevant; to communicate those ideas in a format that allows plenty of argument. If asked to boil these down to a single slogan, we'd suggest: "Robocritic doesn't know, but he sounds like he does."

We had difficulty finding the right person for the job: our early experiments went awry, as the average human mind failed to cope with extended exposure to Live Art. Fortunately, when we discovered the broken body of Mr Criticulous - he succumbed to shingles after the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe, and has been wandering around shouting about "the death of the script" for the past twelve months - we had our consciousness. His Jesuit education had already taken him beyond the edge of reasonable philosophy, and his attempts to combine scientific method and theology as a method of aesthetic assessment mirrored our own madcap schemes to organise the world's governments under one system.

Just as soon as he stops talking in binary, Robocritic will be a regular guest on The Vile Blog. He'll be sent into territories that don't yet have clear definitions, and make a big enough fuss to, hopefully, set out some kind of map for further discussion.