Conference Blogs
“Walking Through an Uncanny Valley” – Jose Hopkins B
The Uncanny Valley is a concept coined by Masahiro Mori and borrowed by theatre director Stephan Kaegi[i] to make a homonymic performance. This concept is used to explain the dip in human’s affinity and affective pairing in relation to a replica’s human likeness. The valley’s dip is produced when an apparently human-like replica, for example…
Read more“(Human) being: striving for perfection” – Gido Broers
While attending and participating in the Performing Robots Conference I have been thinking a lot about the relation between humans and robots and the different kind of questions that emerge out of this relation. In most of the panels, lectures, and performances this relation – or interaction – was used as a starting point for…
Read more“Unproductive and Misbehaving Machines: Exploration of Atypical Robots Through Art” – Irene Alcubilla Troughton
As Stelarc (2014) rightfully puts in a talk called “Error, function and behaviour”, the term “misbehaving”, as opposed to “malfunctioning”, requires certain intentionality and agency. “Misbehaving”, he proposes, can only happen in the presence of someone, whereas “malfunctioning” could take place in the absence of a person, as it relates to an error in the…
Read more“Touchy Robots: Developments in Social Robotics and Robotic Art” – Irene Alcubilla Troughton
The fact that senses are organised under a hierarchy through which some of them are given more importance is not something new. Throughout history, vision, for example, has held a privilege position, followed by sound, and leaving the rest of senses far behind. In the last years, the humanities have explored what kind of paths…
Read more