Robots: The 500-year Quest to Make Machines Human

Dittmann, Frank; Lange, Nicolas

doi:10.1353/tech.2018.0010

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Automata, as apparently self-moving figures, were able to represent the adherence of all creation to these divinely set laws, and they could thereby direct audiences' attention towards a rumination on and reverence of God. In other words, automata modelled and participated in the vitality of God's creation; as such, they were designed to be placed in cathedrals and to represent and captivate a sense of wonder at the intricate workings of God's created order (Riskin 2010;Truitt 2017;Trovato et al 2018, p. 30). The role of mediation, which Meyer discusses, is here highlighted: "The medium thus becomes hyper-apparent, in that it is celebrated as a technological realisation of already existing religious modes of looking and visualisation.…”

Section: Robots and Representation: Theological Reflections On The Me...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Posthuman Priests: Exploring the ‘New Visibility of Religion’ in Robotic Re(-)presentations of Religious Rituals

Midson

2022

Religions

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In 2017, visitors to a church in Wittenberg were given the opportunity to receive blessings from a robot. The so-called ‘robot priest’, named ‘BlessU-2’, poses a lot of questions and possibilities. One of these is about the ways that robots might mediate and represent religious teachings, beliefs, and experiences, which is the focus of this paper. Taking Hoelzl and Ward’s ‘new visibility of religion’ hypothesis, the paper asks about what kind of visibility BlessU-2—and similar robots in religious contexts—represents: is it whimsical; novel; authentic; secular? By locating the robot in historical and theological frameworks, the nuances of what it represents and how it might be seen to mediate religiosity in some way are revealed and discussed.

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Section: Robots and Representation: Theological Reflections On The Me...mentioning

confidence: 99%