Creators Matter. Perception and Pricing of Art Made by Human, Cyborgs and Humanoid Robots

Not only does the art market include human and nonhuman creators, it also incorporates technologically augmented artists, called cyborgs. They use wearables, sensors, chips, and even new organs to process various stimuli, such as electromagnetic radiation, atmospheric pressure, or ultraviolet rays, to produce artworks. Little is known however, how the objects produced by them are perceived by the art recipients. This paper applies an experimental study with 373 non-experts in the field of art. The results show that the perceived value of the painting depends on the type of agent and on the context of the evaluation. The price of objects created by a human artist is significantly higher if the context cue is the price of the canvas made by humanoid robot than another human. People value cyborg's artwork similarly to human-generated artwork when contextual cue is human, and similarly to robot-generated artwork when contextual cue is humanoid robot.