March 17, 2000

A Computer Scientist Uses His Art to Question the Embrace of Technology

By LAWRENCE BIEMILLER

Ken Goldberg's research is all about facts, but his online works challenge viewers' reality

Back away from the big painting in Ken Goldberg's office and its heavy black lines resolve into a man wearing a homburg and smoking a cigar. It's a portrait painted partly by a robot Mr. Goldberg created in 1992, and the subject is William Mulholland, the man who built a 238-mile aqueduct to bring water to Los Angeles from the Owens Valley.

But that's not the Mulholland story Mr. Goldberg

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