Judy
Over millennia, the art of puppetry has brought inanimate objects to life, imbuing them with feeling and personality. Today, emergent technologies further complicate our relationships to objects, creating complex networks of human, non- and more-than-human actors. How might these dynamics be explored, tested and elaborated through a re-imagined form of puppetry?
JUDY is an on-going interdisciplinary research project between renowned choreographer Melanie Lane and the University of Canberra Robotics Lab and Faculty of Arts and Design. It transforms the iconic tradition of ‘Punch and Judy’ puppet shows, rematerializing its artefacts as robotic actors that are animated through a feminist lens. The creative processes and outputs of this project aim to tease-out the complex network of relationships that future cyber-physical systems may imply, encompassing multi-layered encounters between human actors, technological systems and audiences in a digitally mediated context.
JUDY: FIRST KISS (2023)
FIRST KISS is the first in a series of works produced through the JUDY project. Produced during Melanie Lane’s UC Artist Residency in Digital Innovation, supported by the ACT Government Creative Recovery and Resilience Program (2021-22), it is the outcome of an 8-week intensive collaboration between this international esteemed choreographer and engineers from UC’s Robotics Lab. The resulting proof-of-concept artwork, FIRST KISS, invites audiences to contemplate an alternate future, where the misogynistic legacy of the Punch and Judy tradition, has been re-written.
FIRST KISS is a kinetic installation that evokes an image of intimacy for a speculative, post-human future. Visible from every side, two robotic arms with beautiful human faces perform a looped dance sequence to a score — an intimate pas de deux — culminating in a tender kiss. Their uncanny gestural echolalia defamiliarizes the kiss, highlighting the hidden subtleties of a seemingly banal movement. In doing so, it invites audiences to contemplate how human-to-human communication is increasingly mediated by digital platforms and interfaces, while human relationships with artificially intelligent agents become increasingly prevalent. It asks how these social, cultural and technological transformations may impact future perceptions of consent, intimacy and love.
Publications
Herath, Damith C. and McKenzie, Vahri and Thwaites, Denise and Lane, Melanie, Making the Familiar Strange (November 28, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4339264 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4339264
Thwaites, Denise, Herath, Damith and McKenzie, Vahri, Curating Transdisciplinary Residencies: Time and Place for a ‘First Kiss’ (June 2024). ISEA2024 Conference
Past Exhibition
Judy: First Kiss will be at the Winter Innovation Festival. The Uncharted Territory from the 7th of July 2023 to 17th July 2023.
Project Team:
Melanie Lane is an Australian/Javanese choreographer and performer. She has collaborated with artists from film, visual art, theatre and music, creating works that tread between performative forms and contexts. Her independent work has been presented at international festivals and theatres in Europe. USA, Indonesia and Australia.
University of Canberra (UC) Associate Professor, Dr Damith Herath, leads multidisciplinary robotic research projects and is the co-and founding chair of the International Workshop on Robotics & Art.
University of Canberra (UC) Assistant Professor in Digital Arts, Dr Denise Thwaites, is a writer, curator and core member of the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research in the Faculty of Arts and Design.
Senior Lecturer, Arts and Cultural Management at Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA, Edith Cowan University), Dr Vahri McKenzie is an educator, artist and scholar whose work frames creative engagement as a model of, and practice for, ways of being together in a complex world. Over 2021-22, Vahri was Research Fellow in Arts and Health within the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research at University of Canberra.
Project Interns – Christopher McCourt, Adrian Rodriguez Durand and Yagnesh Naidu.
Project Engineers – Michael Pritchard