I gave a performance-lecture with Hortense Gerardo and CRANE, the co-robotic arm, for SLSA 2023 at ASU. Our talk discussed perceptions of embodied intelligence and trust in human-robot interaction. This piece builds off of our previous work Dances with Robots, for Heidi Latsky’s ON DISPLAY GLOBAL 2020, and leads towards our IDEAS performance “Beyond the Black Box” at the Qualcomm Institute in May of 2023.

Beyond the Black Box: A Performance-Lecture on Embodied Interaction in Human and Machines

Beyond the Black Box is a performance and lecture on embodied interactions in humans and machines. Over the course of 30 minutes, three human and robot participants unpack the ways that intelligence and creativity require a body. Through a mix of spoken text, collaborative movement, and embodied interaction—the performance explores elements of intimacy and play in human-robot interaction, and ultimately wrestle with who (and what) might properly be considered an embodied intelligence.

Our three presenters are Hortense Gerardo (movement), CRANE (co-robotic arm with Twomey as operator), and Pepper (humanoid robot with Eguchi as operator). Collectively, this group has deep prior experience in performance and movement (Gerardo), creative robotics (Twomey) and human-robot interaction (Eguchi and Twomey). The proposed work builds on our 2022 performance (Dances with Robots) to create a standalone performance-lecture for SLSA.

PERFORMANCE-LECTURE (artwork and presentation/performance)