The Multiple Bodies of a Machine Performer

Demers, Louis-Philippe

doi:10.1007/978-981-10-0321-9_14

Cited by 10 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…As it has been demonstrated in numerous shows, performances, interactive installations, etc., these robot arms can produce very suggestive human-like dancelike patterns, even though they are typically fixed to the floor and do not at all look like a human dancer. This is demonstrated convincingly in the video 12 from Mylene Farmer's Concert Tour in 2013 mentioned above.…”

Section: Dimension 1 Movementsmentioning

confidence: 66%

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Robots on stage

Christiansen¹,

Lindelof²

2020

EAI Endorsed Transactions on Creative Technologies

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Section: Dimension 1 Movementsmentioning

confidence: 66%

“…Demers [12] coins the term "machine performers" in order to cover a broad spectrum of inanimate performing artefacts. From a phenomenological and embodied perspective on his own work The Tiller Girls, he emphasises how also machine performers need the co-presence of the audience to be fully realised (p. 276).…”

Section: Robots As Performative Gestaltsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robots on stage

Christiansen¹,

Lindelof²

2020

EAI Endorsed Transactions on Creative Technologies

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“…The work brings into conjunction the cultural legacy of the 1930s (human) dance ensemble, named “The Tiller Girls,” with a troupe of 32 small machine performers. The robots, deployed as machine performers in The Tiller Girls, were originally developed by scientists Fumiya Iida, Raja David, and Max Lungarella at the Artificial Intelligence Lab, Zurich, to “study locomotion and gaits derived from simplified morphologies” ( Demers, 2016 : 281). Demers’ dramaturgy utilizes the movements and their “fairly rich” qualities produced by these unusual morphologies to contrast “The Tiller Girls” human yet machinelike performance.…”

Section: Designing With Bodying-thingingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Demers’ dramaturgy utilizes the movements and their “fairly rich” qualities produced by these unusual morphologies to contrast “The Tiller Girls” human yet machinelike performance. Opposing the highly synchronized lines of the human ensemble, Demers’ performance unfolds through a dramatic staging of simple machines rhythmically hopping and occasionally falling as part of a “structured chaotic ‘improvisation’” ( Demers, 2016 : 288) ( Figure 10 ). Similar to the aesthetics of the aforementioned “disjunction of form and movement,” this choreography puts to work the performers’ abstract, simple shape to produce a surprising range of unique movement characteristics ( Demers, 2016 ) that give the troupe a dynamic, unpredictable, and whimsical quality.…”

Section: Designing With Bodying-thingingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Aesthetics of Encounter: A Relational-Performative Design Approach to Human-Robot Interaction

Gemeinboeck

2021

Front. Robot. AI

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This article lays out the framework for relational-performative esthetics in human-robot interaction, comprising a theoretical lens and design approach for critical practice-based inquiries into embodied meaning-making in human-robot interaction. I explore the centrality of esthetics as a practice of embodied meaning-making by drawing on my arts-led, performance-based approach to human-robot encounters, as well as other artistic practices. Understanding social agency and meaning as being enacted through the situated dynamics of the interaction, I bring into focus a process of bodying-thinging; entangling and transforming subjects and objects in the encounter and rendering elastic boundaries in-between. Rather than serving to make the strange look more familiar, aesthetics here is about rendering the differences between humans and robots more relational. My notion of a relational-performative design approach—designing with bodying-thinging—proposes that we engage with human-robot encounters from the earliest stages of the robot design. This is where we begin to manifest boundaries that shape meaning-making and the potential for emergence, transformation, and connections arising from intra-bodily resonances (bodying-thinging). I argue that this relational-performative approach opens up new possibilities for how we design robots and how they socially participate in the encounter.

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“…Theatre and live performance have proven to be valuable sites for conducting tractable HRI research. Scripted theatre plays can be used as discussion tools concerning possible future care and work scenarios between humans and robots (Walters et al 2013;Jochum et al 2017), or as sites for exploring innovative approaches to the design and control of creative machinic performers and their effects on audiences (Demers 2016;Jochum et al 2016;Vorn 2016). Typically, audiences observe a performance and afterward complete selfassessments or group interviews.…”

Section: Performance As Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming Cyborg: Interdisciplinary Approaches for Exoskeleton Research

Jochum

Demers

Vorn

et al. 2018

Electronic Workshops in Computing

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This paper describes novel interdisciplinary approaches for the design and training of cyborg technologies, specifically upper body exoskeletons. EXACT: Exoskeletons, Art and Choreographic Training is a multi-faceted research effort that uses dance performance and experimental trials to study the effects of movement and live performance on exoskeleton training. The goal is to combine research methods from the arts with human robot interaction (HRI) research. The rationale for using ethnographic methods (which privilege qualitative analysis through video data and multimodal interaction analysis) within an HRI framework is to develop nuanced approaches for studying embodiment and techno-corporeality in socially-situated contexts. This investigation has led to the development of new evaluation tools and frameworks for studying human-machine interaction, including human-centred assessments and custom virtual reality tools that allow for fine-grained analysis. An interdisciplinary approach is essential for studying the corporeal experience in human-machine interactions.

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The Multiple Bodies of a Machine Performer

Cited by 10 publications

References 32 publications

Robots on stage

Robots on stage

The Aesthetics of Encounter: A Relational-Performative Design Approach to Human-Robot Interaction

Becoming Cyborg: Interdisciplinary Approaches for Exoskeleton Research

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