Welcome by Damith Herath

Workshop #1: Enacting and Encountering Soft Robots by Jonas Jørgensen

Click here for workshop details.

Jonas Jørgensen is a Danish researcher, media artist, and educator. He is formally trained as a physicist (BSc) and an art historian (BA, MA) at Copenhagen University and Columbia University. He is currently a PhD fellow at the IT University of Copenhagen with a project that interrogates soft robotic technology through art and aesthetics. His publications appear in academic journals and popular outlets including edited volumes, artist monographs, exhibition catalogues, art pedagogical journals, and conference proceedings. He has given lectures, presented papers, and organized workshops related to his research on soft robotics and robotic art at a number of international conferences and festivals including MediaArtHistories, ISEA, Pixelache, MOCO, HRI, and Aesthetics of the Posthuman. His artistic output has been exhibited at international institutions including Chronus Art Center (Shanghai, China), Forum Box (Helsinki, Finland), Kunsthal Grenland (Porsgrunn, Norway), and Nikolaj Kunsthal (Copenhagen, Denmark).

Design, Fabrication and Control of Soft Robots by Daniela Rus *ICRA Keynote

Morning Tea

Beyond the Uncanny Valley by Ken Goldberg

“I want to be a robot.” – Andy Warhol In 1919, 101 years after Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published and one year before the word “robot” was coined, Sigmund Freud published an essay, Das Unheimliche, later translated into English as “The Uncanny”.  The essay and the concept of the Uncanny are familiar to literary theorists and art historians, who have charted its the literary and theatrical origins of the concept through works by ETA Hoffman, Mary Shelley, Karel Capek, and Isaac Asimov, its rich history in psychoanalysis, aesthetics, and philosophy, from Jensch to Freud to Heidegger to Derrida to Cixous to what Martin Jay described as the “master trope” of the 1990’s. Roboticists are familiar with the Uncanny Valley, a related but distinct concept that originated in 1970, which relates to our contemporary fear and fascination with a broad variety of technologies from AI to cosmetics to robots to Siri to Google Glass to zombies. In my own art and research, I’m interested in mortality and the boundary between what is alive and what is life-like.  I’ll present a series of short films and artworks that explore this boundary, including the Telegarden (1995-2004), an online installation that let participants tend a living garden using an industrial robot via the Internet (http://goldberg.berkeley.edu/garden/Ars/)

Ken Goldberg is an artist and professor UC Berkeley. Ken is a pioneer in internet-based robotic telepresence and Cloud-Based Robotics /Automation and has published over 200 peer-reviewed technical papers on algorithms for robotics, automation, and social information filtering; his inventions have been awarded eight US Patents. He is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE), Co-Founder of the African Robotics Network (AFRON), Co-Founder of the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), Co-Founder and CTO of Hybrid Wisdom Labs, Co-Founder of the Moxie Institute, and Founding Director of UC Berkeley’s Art, Technology, and Culture Lecture Series which has hosted over 150 presentations by artists and curators. Ken’s artwork has
been exhibited at Ars Electronica, ZKM, Centre Pompidou, ICC Biennale, Kwangju Biennale, Artists Space, The Kitchen, and the Whitney Biennial. For details on research and art, please visit: http://goldberg.berkeley.edu

On the influence of constraints on an artistic practice by Patrick Tresset

As the theme of the forum, this year is compliance, we can consider its necessary complement: constraint. I will present and describe the design/artistic/physical/technological constraints that influence the development, production and exhibition of my robotic installations in a contemporary art context. I will end the talk with a brief comment on the influence of joints compliance on drawing style.

Patrick Tresset is a London based artist. His art practices follow two main path, on one hand Tresset presents theatrical installations in which robotic agents are actors, these installations are often evocations of humanness. Tresset crafts the computational systems driving the robots so that their behaviour can be perceived as artistic, expressive and obsessive. These systems are influenced by research into human behaviour, more specifically how humans make marks, how humans depict other humans, how humans perceive artworks and how humans relate to robots. On the other hand Tresset also uses robots and computational systems to produce series of drawings, paintings and videos.

Tender Technologies and Paradoxical Bodies: Animal, Human and Machine Hybrids by Ingrid Bachmann

Many age old assumptions and practices are coming into question, long held views about nature, human nature, about the definition of life are being re- examined and in many cased abandoned. The proliferation of new technologies and media, advances in biotechnologies, AI, and genetic engineering are provoking a re-examination of the constitution of the terms “nature”, “human” and “machine”.  Subsequently, the re- examination of these “essential” categories are likewise reshaping notions of self, society and other, and provoking some new and potent configurations of what constitutes life. One boundary to be breached in addition to organism/machine is the distinction between animal/human. Current developments in biotechnologies – xenotransplantation, michrochimerism – suggest that biology does matter and that the machine/human coupling is expanding into the machine/human/animal hybrid. In this talk I would like to explore a more thoughtful awareness of the complicated connections between bodies -human, animal, machine, and material bodies. I will look at some early examples of human- animal hybrids and then discuss an interactive and kinetic sculptural art project entitled Pelt (Bestiary) that explores some of these ideas. In Pelt (Bestiary) I wanted to give digital technology back its pelt – to bring the bestial and the messiness of the world back into the realm of digital technology and to continue my work in grounding the digital experience in the material realm. I am interested in the idea of tender technology, to use technology for ends that are not necessarily productive in the usual sense of the word.

Ingrid Bachmann is a Montreal artist who works in multiple formats including kinetic and interactive sculptures and installations, drawing, sound and video. Technology, both redundant and new, figure in her work as do the stories that are told around them. Bachmann has exhibited her working nationally and internationally including the 11th Biennial of Havana (Cuba), Manifestation D’art International 6, (Quebec), the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Canada), as well as exhibitions and festivals in Belgium, the U.S., Estonia, Singapore, Peru, Cuba, Australia, Hong Kong, and the UK. Bachmann is currently Associate Professor in the Studio Arts Department at  Concordia University in Montreal, Canada and the Director of the Institute of Everyday Life, art-ideas research lab.

Biological Robotic Realities: Interfacing human heart muscle cells to artistic robotic bodies by Nathan Thompson

The Bio Technology and Tissue Engineering industries are moving into the robotics field. No longer are our automatons just inspired or are mimicking the natural world, biology is now part of the process for actuation.
In many ways, it is inevitable that the trajectory is taking us in this direction but the problematic issues surrounding engineering and production of living machines is something that needs to be discussed.
We live in a “Control” culture where success is measured by the degree we affect the objects around us, our beliefs in the powers of technology to solve our problems err on the cultish. What does it mean to design and control a living machine? What do we do when things go wrong? What are the practical, artistic and ethical implications of doing so? The artist is perfectly situated to not only pull apart this hyped hope but also to shine a light into the dark corners so everyone is kept honest.
Biological Robotics is becoming a reality. It is but a continuum of 4.5 billion years of research really, cybernetics is coming to its “natural” conclusion and our algorithmic amour is starting to show cracks.
Nothing is black and white anymore, binary is passé – the future is biological.

Nathan John Thompson explores the possibilities of man/machine interaction, mechanical sentience and the hidden creative corners that arise from these relationships. His work often questions the role of humans in the natural landscape in order to build greater understanding of our inhabited space. Nathan has shown work and performed throughout Australia, Europe, Asia and Latin America, he is currently researching at SymbioticA – concentrating on IP Stem Cell technologies implementing bio-engineered human heart cells to drive astir soft/biological-robotics.

Sentimental Machines: Affective experience enabled by soft robotic interfaces by Caroline Yan Zheng

My research and practice investigate emotionally engaging properties of soft robotic artefacts, and the novel sensory experiences enabled by these creature-like machines, when interacting with the human body. I create wearable artefacts and toolkits to engage designers and the public in critically imagining possible affective relations with these disruptive materials. We explore novel modalities and meanings of interacting remotely through simulated physical contact. Through collaborative work, I also reflect on how design contributes to this emerging field.

Caroline Yan Zheng is a researcher and designer working at the intersection of fashion, soft robotics and experience design. Trained in ESMOD Paris for fashion design and pattern cutting, she holds an MA in Fashion Futures from London College of Fashion. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art, in Information Experience Design (IED) and Fashion. Her practice-led research explores the design space of affective, sensual interfaces and synthetic touch enabled by soft robotic technologies. She has also initiated Sentimental Machines, a cross-disciplinary forum exploring human-machine relationships mediated by affective technology and robotics. Her work and workshops have been at the V&A Museum, London Design Festival, STATE of Emotion Festival Berlin, Athens Digital Art Festival, and Manchester Science Festival, among others.

Lunch Break + Video Session

See here for the session details.

Recent investigations into robotic art – agency, dramaturgy, musicianship by Wade Marynowsky

Robot Opera has established an initial conceptual framework for robotic performance leading to initial insights into robotic performance agency and dramaturgy. The research invites the audience to consider robots as performance agents within a performative and dramaturgical system. It was found, through audience focus groups and eight festival performances, that notions of performance agency could arise from algorithmic non-human performance agents. It was also found that non-human performers could engage audiences in dramaturgical contexts across a sustained performance work. A secondary finding was that audience members tended to anthropomorphise robot performers and projected social formations and hierarchies onto them. Audio signals, speech-like sonic structures and recognizable vocal gestures were seen to influence this strongly as did algorithmic movement interactions with audience members.

Wade Marynowsky is one of Australia’s leading creative robotics artist’s. Achieving significant critical praise and international recognition for his performances and exhibitions. Working interdisciplinary and collaboratively across the arts, science and technology sectors, he specialises in the emergent and experimental practice of robotic performance art. His main body of work explores the notion of robotic performance agency by challenging notions of classical spectatorship and performance. Through the use humour, camp and a host of unnerving thematics he addresses important issues relevant to our ever increasing technological society. He has designed numerous interactive robotic art works for exhibitions and performances that constantly defy traditional concepts of how robots should act and behave.

On Expressive Robotic Systems: Simultaneous Art and Experiment with Dancing Robo by Amy Laviers

Why would a robotics lab need an artist-in-residence?  What’s the practical value in a “dancing” robot?  The idea that function and expression can be divided is present in the first usage of the term “robot” in Capek’s science fiction play, RUR, where the characters discuss the differences between humans and robots in this light; indeed, this origin confuses the science around this aspect of robotics.  Thus, I pose a formalism for the concept of expression – and its fundamental relationship with function – to inform robotic system design and analysis. Then, through embodied audience participation and visual aids, I will present ongoing work in my lab that is developing such expressive robotic systems and measuring their effect on humans through art and performance. I’ll explain how embodied movement exercises have informed the software and hardware design of in-development robots, how movement analysts are integral parts of this work flow, how perception of variable motion depends on context, and how an artistic performance acts as a live testbed for expressive robotic systems.

Amy LaViers is an assistant professor in the Mechanical Science and Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and director of the Robotics, Automation, and Dance (RAD) Lab.  She is the recipient of a 2015 DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) and 2017 Product Design of the Year at the 4^th Revolution Awards in Chicago for her automation software start up AE Machines.  She completed a two year Certification in Movement Analysis (CMA) in 2016 at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS).  Prior to UIUC she held a position as an assistant professor in systems and information engineering at the University of Virginia.  She completed her Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Tech with a dissertation that included a live performance exploring stylized motion.  Her research began in her undergraduate senior thesis at Princeton University where she earned a certificate in dance and a degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Robots that Draw and Automating Art by Todd Murphey

Robots are integrating into our lives as we are increasingly driven by driverless cars, have vacuums that autonomously clean our homes, and expect machines to deliver our packages.  These capabilities seemingly mimic only low-level human capabilities, and the automation that enables them tends to be designed with low-level capabilities in mind.  Robots that create artwork confront us with a different viewpoint of automation, a viewpoint that encourages us to wonder whether robots may be able to have creative capabilities similar to those we usually hold in reserve for ourselves.  If a robot draws a beautiful portrait, is it creating art?  If not, why not?  This may come down to the sophistication and complexity we discern in the creation process, and in some cases drawing can be automated very simple tools.

Dr. Todd D. Murphey is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Physical Therapy & Human Movement Sciences at Northwestern University. He received his B.S. degree in mathematics from the University of Arizona and the Ph.D. degree in Control and Dynamical Systems from the California Institute of Technology. His laboratory is part of the Neuroscience and Robotics Laboratory, and his research interests include computational methods for mechanics and real-time optimal control, human-in-the-loop control, and information theory in physical systems. Honors include the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2006, membership in the 2014-2015 DARPA/IDA Defense Science Study Group, and Northwestern’s Charles Deering McCormick Professorship of Teaching Excellence. He is a Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

Afternoon Tea

Lightning Talks

• Time to Compile: Compliance Between Artistic Inquiry and Research Questions by Catie Cuan and Amy LaViers [PDF]
• Portable Cable-Driven Parallel Robots for Large-Scale Art Applications by Adam Fingrut, Kristof Crolla and Darwin Lau []
• Hi-fidelity Robotic Pen Drawing on a Bumpy Surface by Daeun Song and Young J. Kim
• Social Robotics in Education: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Teaching Affective Movement Planning by Belinda J Dunstan [PDF]
• Vicarious Movement: Human-Drone Interactive Painting by Rochelle Haley and Sang-won Leigh [PDF]
• Drawing with an Industrial Robot by James Ireland, et al.
• How To Design Your Polymer Artificial Muscle Actuator/ Sensor by Marwa A. ElDiwiny, Eric Cattan, Christian Duriez []

Workshop #2: Soft is the New Hard by Philip Millar

Click here for workshop details.

Philip Millar is the Associate Creative Director at The Creature Technology Company, and was part of the creative development team for Global Creatures’ productions of Walking with the Dinosaurs, How To Train Your Dragon, King Kong, and Lady Liberty. Millar is one of Australia’s leading puppet artists with three decades of experience as a performer, designer, and director of puppetry for theater, film, and television. www.creaturetechnology.com