This paper examines science centre displays incorporating robotic technologies to provoke reflection on social robotics. Drawing on research in post-phenomenology and science and technology studies, it considers how exhibits in Born or... more
This paper examines science centre displays incorporating robotic technologies to provoke reflection on social robotics. Drawing on research in post-phenomenology and science and technology studies, it considers how exhibits in Born or Built? about robotic emotion undermine its framing narrative of human-robot convergence. Comparing these science centre exhibits to social robotics demonstrations draws attention to how the exhibits move away from convincing audiences about the truth or merits of these technologies to instead convey their difference and open-endedness. While there are limited popular narratives and images to invoke in exploring these ideas, relationships can be drawn between the displays and historical automata and contemporary robotic artwork, practices that frequently seek to promote reflection on robotic otherness, appearance and relationality. Representing robots with robotics points towards the relevance of style to conceptualising robotic diversity and materiality. Style in this sense is not simply an embellishment or surface addition to content, but a material expression inseparable from what is communicated and relative to technological, cultural and social milieus.
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In cinematic experience, a view from nowhere appears in an instituting moment – neither in time nor out of time, but part of time itself – when a camera reflex lifts the viewer’s perception out of somewhere and into the infinite time of... more
In cinematic experience, a view from nowhere appears in an instituting moment – neither in time nor out of time, but part of time itself – when a camera reflex lifts the viewer’s perception out of somewhere and into the infinite time of the film. We argue that the view from nowhere found in Birt Acres’s film Rough Sea at Dover – a fifteen-second shot of waves breaking against a sea wall in Dover, England in 1895 – transcends all attempts to turn it into a view from somewhere, as an empty space that carries the auratic trace of the past into the present through phase shifts of technical mediation. In Simondon’s terms, the view from nowhere opens up possibilities of becoming all ways at once in the reflexive capacity of the human organon. Following Stiegler’s organological technics, we identify the capture of perception by the apparatus of recording and playback in the digitally automated algorithm as a threat to the reflexive capability of the organon to see otherwise in the creative individuation opened up in the phase-shifting process. Our analysis triggers a switch from an anthropocentric to a neganthropic-ecological mode of seeing in which the auratic trace of the event of waves crashing against the pier is seen in an inhuman view from nowhere that carries the threat of automatized systems in which human noesis – self-reflexive capacity – is eclipsed by machines. By seeing otherwise, the eclipse by machines is reversed to reveal the complex becoming of the film in its materiality as a work of creative individuation.
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The Born or Built?-Our Robotic Future (BOB?) exhibition examines relationships between humans, robots and artificial intelligence. It encourages visitors to explore ethical and social issues surrounding these new technologies and invites... more
The Born or Built?-Our Robotic Future (BOB?) exhibition examines relationships between humans, robots and artificial intelligence. It encourages visitors to explore ethical and social issues surrounding these new technologies and invites visitors to post their own questions. We examine visitor responses to the exhibit "Q&A of the Day", which encourages visitors to engage by writing down their own question prompted by their experience in BOB?. As responses were submitted, it became apparent that the questions posed by visitors were potentially a valuable contribution to future science communication policy about robotics, and to those designing and implementing these technologies. We performed a content analysis that distilled themes in visitors' open-ended questioning that conveyed visitor knowledge and insight into what science communication about robotic technologies needs to address. Taken this way, visitors' questions form a moment of dialogue between the public and science communicators, engineers and researchers in which visitors contribute their knowledge and ideas about robotics. Such moments of dialogue are potentially valuable if the public is to be included in the development of robotics technology to build trust in robotics technology.
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This paper conceptualizes human to robot empathy as empathetic arrangements configured in caring spaces. Analyzing empathy towards care robots as arrangements comprising robots, spaces, discourses, bodies and institutions enables... more
This paper conceptualizes human to robot empathy as empathetic arrangements configured in caring spaces. Analyzing empathy towards care robots as arrangements comprising robots, spaces, discourses, bodies and institutions enables recognition of the way empathy is about self-other relationships while eschewing an understanding of empathy in terms of a reciprocal relationship between human and robot. Situating the therapeutic, zoomorphic robot, Paro and the health care support robot, Care-O-Bot as part of empathetic arrangements draws attention to how the cultivation of empathy towards robots governs and regulates patient sociality. In particular, it shows that these robots do not function as substitutes for human carers but instead are dependent on human labor if they are to deliver therapy ethically and effectively. They rely on the affective labor of the patient and the labor of carers and others in the arrangement.
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The 2003 Mars Explorer Rovers (MER), Spirit and Opportunity were tele-robots operated by a complex collaborative process involving about 120 scientists and engineers. The scientists operating the Rovers experienced telepresence on Mars,... more
The 2003 Mars Explorer Rovers (MER), Spirit and Opportunity were tele-robots operated by a complex collaborative process involving about 120 scientists and engineers. The scientists operating the Rovers experienced telepresence on Mars, raising questions about embodiment and the human capacity to transport itself across distance via data. This instance of telepresence is intriguing because it occurs in the absence of real-time interaction and sensory rich feedback, which are often deemed essential to telepresence. This paper argues that MER telepresence can be understood in terms of the open perceptual circuit, as developed by Aud Sissel Hoel and Annamaria Carusi from Merleau-Ponty’s later writings. Remote operation employs a decentred body that is in an open perceptual circuit with its environment, interrelated with representations, data and tools. MER telepresence shows how Merleau-Ponty’s thought about embodiment relationships extends beyond Don Ihde’s account of the incorporation of tools as proxies into a body schema. Returning to the MER operators’ experience enables the articulation of dimensions of telepresence that go beyond sensory rich, real time interaction, such as the embodied imagination, linguistic projection and cultural narratives.
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The development of digital taste and smell underscores the importance of cultural dimensions of bodily perception in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) devices. This can be seen in Vocktail and Season Traveller, two digital... more
The development of digital taste and smell underscores the importance of cultural dimensions of bodily perception in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) devices. This can be seen in Vocktail and Season Traveller, two digital devices incorporating taste and smell. Vocktail is an AR technology that augments the experience of drinking water, or even air, through the electrical stimulation of tastebuds and the manipulation of color and smell. Season Traveller is a VR game in which the user moves through four seasonal landscapes. It uses wind, odor, and temperature in addition to the more standard audio-visual displays. The cultural dimensions of these devices can be examined using phenomenological terms. They instigate perceptual circuits, and call on and create sedimented habits. Although VR and AR are often thought of in terms of their similitude to reality, understanding Vocktail and Season Traveller this way illustrates the world-creating dimension of multisensory devices. These technologies structure and shift thresholds of taste and smell, reworking past perceptual styles and habits to develop new perceptual experiences. In so doing, Season Traveller and Vocktail throw to the fore questions about the conditions according to which people exercise their senses in digitally dominated environments.
This paper examines the ways in which computer science and a selection of multisensory digital devices modulate the term culture. Three self-identified, ?cultural computing? devices are examined: ZENetic, Alice?s Adventures and GRIOT?S... more
This paper examines the ways in which computer science and a selection of multisensory digital devices modulate the term culture. Three self-identified, ?cultural computing? devices are examined: ZENetic, Alice?s Adventures and GRIOT?S Japanese Renku. The devices variously configure relationships between bodies and culture so that the body is thought to provide a window into particular cultures, as well as a universal tool of their transmission. These delineations of the term culture occur in continuity with surrounding political histories and projects, including racial and ethnic ones. Dividing the body between the extra cultural and the culturally specific works to secure the communicability as well as the exclusivity of cultural practices. It is an instance of what Merleau-Ponty terms a divergence, a gap within the body between two imbricated parts. In this way, these devices present culture as a source of innovation that combats global and abstracted computing practices.
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Social robotics asks people to be physically and psychologically intimate with robots. Of all the senses, touch is most associated with intimacy and the material qualities of contact readily morph into psychological ones. To see how these... more
Social robotics asks people to be physically and psychologically intimate with robots. Of all the senses, touch is most associated with intimacy and the material qualities of contact readily morph into psychological ones. To see how these intricacies of touch are present but not always fully articulated in research into tactility in social robots, this paper firstly considers two sets of research in tactile robotics, one examining touch in an anthropomorphic robot and the other in an innovative, partially zoomorphic robot. While such research can be criticised for functionalising and quantifying touch, this is not an exhaustive understanding of the incorporation of affective touch in social robotics. Alongside functional and quantifying processes (and not necessarily in opposition to them) are novel and rich imaginative ones, often driven by low-tech materials. These dimensions of affective touch are more often articulated in discussions of robotic, cinematic, tactile and media art that consider the perceptual style of touch to be multivalent, imaginative and mobile. This perspective can contribute to articulating the dynamics of affective touch in social robotics, allowing for the recognition of the importance of the low-tech, material features that are a noteworthy part of touching robots. The ambiguities and indeterminacies of affective touch, messy materialism and the interactivity of affect interweave with high-tech computational practices in generating the experience of touching social robots.
As they arrive in our homes, nursing facilities and educational institutions, urgent questions are being asked about the ethics of encouraging people to have feelings towards social robots that have roles as companions, carers and... more
As they arrive in our homes, nursing facilities and educational institutions, urgent questions are being asked about the ethics of encouraging people to have feelings towards social robots that have roles as companions, carers and teachers. This article suggests that the quality of these debates is enhanced by examining how people perceive robots and, in particular, how robots’ expressive characteristics stimulate feelings through engaging the embodied imagination. I discuss the perception and expression of the zoomorphic therapeutic robot Paro, before considering the directions an understanding of these processes can take discussions about the aesthetics and ethics of social robots.