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FCJManager has written 9 posts for FCJ 28: Creative Robotics
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FCJ-211 Embodying a Future for the Future: Creative Robotics and Ecosophical Praxis

By ⋅ January 23, 2017 ⋅ Post a comment

Keith Armstrong Queensland University of Technology Ecosophy Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss (1995) defined ecosophy as a form of personal, relational and intersubjective philosophy, or a guiding series of principles, which he contrasted with the discipline(s) of ecophilosophy. Ecosophy was subsequently developed by a number of commentators, notably Félix Guattari (1995) who categorised it as a relational process that draws upon interconnected networks of mind, society and environment. My own synthesis, or ecosophical undertaking, is contexualised within the aegis of experimental arts practices, comingled over the past 22 years with diverse historical tendencies in new media arts and net art. In response to societal and environmental imperatives, I have evolved an approach to thinking and working that I call ecosophical, and that involves scoping out a relational, interactive, embodied and interdisciplinary series of interventions that interrogate cultural conditions. This process has involved a broad swathe of media and approaches, and in […]

FCJ-210 Falling Robots.

By ⋅ January 23, 2017 ⋅ Post a comment

Lian Loke The University of Sydney Falling is not usually viewed as a desirable act for humanoid robots, as it can lead to damage and injury of people, things and the robot itself. This article explores how falling can be viewed as an aesthetic, creative, and indeed desirable act, through positioning it within the disciplines of dance and choreography. Strategies for falling safely in dance are compared with engineering approaches to controlling falling for bipedal robots. By this comparison, the article identifies two main areas in which an aesthetic approach to movement might be used to extend falling strategies for humanoid robots. Studying and categorising reflexes used by dancers and humanoid robots in falling, the article proposes that particular reflexes be used as common ground in developing a more communicative language for moving, falling and performing robots. Then, by playing with parameters of movement as dancers and choreographers do, falling […]

FCJ-209 Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Pattern Thinking: An Expanded Analysis of the First Indigenous Robotics Prototype Workshop

By ⋅ January 23, 2017 ⋅ Post a comment

Angie Abdilla Robert Fitch The University of Sydney https://fibreculturejournal.org/AbdillaFitch.mp4 Introduction It could seem to some that Indigenous Knowledge is fundamentally at odds with the contemporary digital age, and with Western society’s thirst and demand for new knowledge to be constantly generated. Furthermore, it would also seem diametrically opposed to science-led ventures into the Brave New World of technological advancement in the field of robotics. Yet, precisely at this juxtaposition a commonality can be drawn. How might we create a space for Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Pattern Thinking to impact and influence future developments in, for example, autonomous systems in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI)? Creating a physical and pedagogical space for an initial foray into these ideas, the Indigenous Robotics Prototype Workshop embarked on practical and creative experimentation along new Indigenous Digital Songlines. This paper is formatted as a dialogue between the lead author, an Indigenous consultant in innovation, technology […]

FCJ-208 This Machine Could Bite: On the Role of Non-Benign Art Robots

By ⋅ January 23, 2017 ⋅ Post a comment

Paul Granjon Cardiff School of Art and Design, Cardiff Metropolitan University This paper explores the phenomenon of social robots from the perspective of an electronic artist, a practitioner making robots and other machines within an artistic context. My art objects are vehicles for reflecting on the co-evolution of humans and machines, a reflection informed by observation and experience. Intelligent robots are of particular interest to my practice as they combine mobility, service, social interaction and adaptive skills so as to integrate with the fabric of human society as embodied semi-autonomous agents. They also have captured the imagination of a wide public through works of fiction, wherein advanced robot characters have been commonplace for many decades. People, it appears, are curious about the capabilities of intelligent robots. Buoyed by techno-scientific progress and financial interest, the field of robotics is fast gaining visibility and maturity, undergoing a tremendous development effort for research, […]

FCJ-207 Game On: A Creative Enquiry into Agency and the Nature of Cognition in Distributed Systems

By ⋅ January 22, 2017 ⋅ Post a comment

Michaela Davies Introduction The focus of this paper is a participatory artwork, Game On, which is a boxing “game” where one participant can control the actions of another via electric muscle stimulation. [1] The paper explores Game On as a creative enquiry into agency and the nature of cognition in distributed systems. Game On explores what happens to agency in a system where embodied experience is disrupted or extended, based on the understanding that a sense of personal agency is created through actions, and that the actions of others influence our understanding of ourselves as separate from them. Participatory artworks like Game On can be viewed as a form of performative research, creating a system which is analogous in some ways to states of affairs outside that system. [2] In this way, Game On does more than represent possibility: it enables an exploration, in real time and space, of what […]

FCJ-206 From Braitenberg’s Vehicles to Jansen’s Beach Animals: Towards an Ecological Approach to the Design of Non-Organic Intelligence

By ⋅ January 22, 2017 ⋅ Post a comment

Maaike Bleeker Utrecht University For more than twenty years now, Dutch artist and engineer Theo Jansen has been invested in the development of new, non-organic species that he refers to as Strandbeesten, which in English translates to “beach animals”. His beach animals are creatures constructed from plastic conduit normally used to house electric cables, ropes, plastic bottles and pieces of sailcloth. He describes them as ‘skeletons that are able to walk on the wind’. They are called ‘animals’, yet they are completely inorganic. They use the wind to propel themselves and require no other fuel or food. Over time, Jansen has managed to develop creatures that are increasingly capable of ‘surviving’ on their own. His ideal plan is to put the beach animals out in herds on the beaches and have them live their own ‘life’. [1] The intricate complexity and transparency of the beach animals, and the precision of […]

FCJ-205 Life and Labour of Rovers on Mars: Toward Post-Terrestrial Futures of Creative Robotics

By ⋅ January 22, 2017 ⋅ Post a comment

Katarina Damjanov University of Western Australia Curiosity rises early; it is bitterly cold on Mars at around 5am when NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) wakes up the rover with a different popular tune each day (from Hit the Road Jack and Walking on Sunshine to the Beastie Boys’ Intergalactic and the Star Wars theme), and delivers it a list of its daily tasks. Curiosity then sets out through the dust haze enfolding the rusty terrain scorched by solar winds and galactic cosmic rays on its busy schedule to explore the red planet. Rolling on its six wheels across the uneven floor of the Gale Crater, the 2.2 metre tall, 2.3 metre wide and 2.9 metre long rover searches for clues about Mars’ habitability. It uses instruments such as hazard avoidance cameras, an Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and a radiation detector to navigate its Martian environment, sense it, measure its various properties […]

FCJ-204 Degrees of Freedom

By ⋅ January 18, 2017 ⋅ 241 comments

Elena Knox Waseda University. This paper critiques a choreographed performance of embodied agency by a ‘very humanlike’ (Ishiguro, 2006) gynoid robot. It draws on my experience at the Creative Robotics Lab, UNSW Australia, in 2013, with Actroid-F (or Geminoid-F), designed by ATR Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories [1], when I created six artworks making up Actroid Series I (2015). My analysis here proceeds from and through the part-programmed, part-puppeteered actions and vocalisations of Actroid-F in my six-minute video Radical Hospitality, in which the robotic gynoid actor performs compound negotiations of embodied authority, docility, and compliance. All six artworks in the series seek to induce moments of feminist hyper-awareness, or cognitive lysis (Randolph, 2001), that work against the normalisation of instilling gendered societal restrictions into humanoid robots via their embodiments and functionalities. I contend that the forthcoming devolution to ‘very humanlike’ androids of work in the domain of hospitality will draw upon, shape […]

Issue 28 : FCJ-203 Creative Robotics – Rethinking Human Machine Configurations

By ⋅ December 22, 2016 ⋅ Post a comment

issue doi:10.15307/fcj.28 introduction doi:10.15307/fcj.28.203.2017 Introduction by Petra Gemeinboeck of the Creative Robotics Lab, National Institute for Experimental Arts, University of New South Wales. ‘I like your dress. You must be a fashionista.’ ‘Really? Thanks’, I reply, looking into the enormous, cartoony eyes of a child-sized robot with soft, explicitly feminine contours and a perky, human voice. This isn’t a subject of conversation I expected at a male-dominated robotics conference, and initiated by a robot of all things. ‘I also like your shoes’, the robot “girl” continues. ‘I can’t wear shoes because I don’t have feet.’ Pepper, as the robot is called, looks down, dramatically swinging both arms to point me to “her” lack of feet. Then, the robot girl gently tilts its head and starts talking about animals. I begin to wonder if it can actually understand any of my compliant replies and seek the attention of a nearby engineer, […]