Alive Machines
2 December 2018
“First, you build the machine, then it tells you what it’s for.”
-Catherynne M. Valente
Can we collaborate with a robot to dance and improvise? What is the robot’s role in the performance? What is its aesthetic? Can we learn with and through them?
My research is a speculative exploration of the future of human-machine collaboration through the lens of performance. I try to speculate about “how things could be — to imagine possible futures” (Dunne and Raby, 2013). In my concept, the boundaries between the man and the machine are blurred. Many people support that machines and computational systems cannot be creative, but I want to question and debate this norm, trying to find the metaphorical and philosophical components under the machines and its movements. Posing “what if” questions, I am trying to discuss the future of dance and the relationship that it could have with non-human forms. Dunne and Raby (2007) have also developed Technological Dreams Series, №1, Robots (Figure 1), based on the idea that “robots are destined to play a significant part in our daily lives — as technological cohabitants”. In this research, I am trying to open up space for discussion and speculate about an equal relationship between a computational form and a human performer.
Homogenity in human-machine co-creation
Nowadays, the distinctions between the brain and the body, or the human and the machine have been questioned and do not represent antagonistic concepts anymore. This research is built on Donna Haraway’s frameworks of cyborg and naturecultures. Haraway discusses the reconfiguration of nature, to show the complexity of nature and culture, or body and mind, human and non-human. In this research, we also deal with the complex relationship between the human and the machine performer. Each of them is faced as a cyborg, “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (Haraway, 1991) (p. 149). Escaping these universal categories and distinctions of woman and male, or body and mind, the cyborg creates its own identity, allowing multiplicity and contradictions. We are all cyborgs in today’s society, and with all the advantages and disadvantages that this entails, we should try for survival and development.
Kathrine Hayles (1999) also supports that “humans displaced as the dominant form of life on the planet by intelligent machines” (p. 283) and there is need of dynamic partnership between these human and non-human actors. In her book How we became Posthuman, Hayles is referring to many other writers, such as Veronica Hollinger, who expresses the idea of deconstructing the human-machine opposition and focuses on the techniques that we could use in order to produce a mutual evolution (Hayles, 1999) (p. 264). Ihab Hassan predicts the arrival of the posthuman, and Hayles claims that we have always been posthumans (Hayles, 1999) (p. 274–279). In the partnership concept that I am trying to create, I want to give the people the opportunity to think about our evolution and the posthuman philosophy, and as a result to face the machine as an intimate component, a heterogeneous force and a friendly self.
However, no matter how these people try to undercut dichotomies, “technology cannot replace the personal bonds that tie humans to humans, humans to animals and humans to their own ownsenses” (Hayles, 1999) (p. 278). Kevin Kelly (2014) — a technological determinist, has a different view from Kathrine Hayles, as he sees technology as a near-living system that determines what it wants and drives social evolution. He argues that we should align ourselves with technology’s needs in order to prepare for the future. The truth is that we cannot be sure if this technological change is an evolutionary advance or a catastrophe. For example, Uninvited Guests (Figure 3) that created by Superflux Lab (2015) and focuses on a criticism related to domestic space, echoes that machines have not a collaborative and equal role with the human, but seem like they have enough agency to interpret the human needs.
Assigning agency to a non-human actor
The term “actor” is coming from the Actor-Network Theory (AT) and is related with three writers — Michel Callon, Bruno Latour and John Law — revealing the complexities of our sociotechnical world. “An ‘actor’ in AT is a semiotic definition -an actant-, that is, something that acts or to which activity is granted by others. It implies no special motivation for human individual actors, nor of humans in general. An actant can literally be anything provided it is granted to be the source of an action” (Latour, 2017). This framework considers both human and non-human entities equally as actors with the same amount of agency within a network, overcoming with this way the duality between them. However, there are different views in the way that we face the technical objects. Georges Simondon (1958) (p. 12) supports that “On the one hand, it treats them as pure and simple assemblies of material that are quite without true meaning and that only provide utility. On the other hand, it assumes that these objects are also robots and that they harbour intentions hostile to man.”
Hayles is building on Haraway’s theory and refers to the posthuman, an entity that may help humanity to survive and be developed. Additionally, Hayles supports that in the posthuman period “distributed cognition replaces autonomous will; embodiment replaces a body seen as a support system for the mind; and a dynamic partnership between humans and intelligent machines replaces the liberal subject’s manifest destiny to dominate and control nature” (Hayles, 1999) (p. 288). Both Haraway’s and Hayles’ theories are based on the argument that we need to stop thinking of distinctions and look at more interesting and complex relations between human and non-human. Cyborg impacts posthuman and vice versa. As a result, the future of dancing performances changes accepting other creatures and ourselves. We should leave behind the ideas of master dominance and the dualities of virtual and material, and we should accept the human and machine union, so as to survive and develop.
Hayles supports that “in posthuman view, the conscious agency has never been in control” (Hayles, 1999) (p. 288) and asks “What if humans were made to function as if they were components of another entity? What if a computer behaved like a person?” (Hayles, 1999) (p. 251). The topic of agency is important in this context, as we don’t know at the end who is going to be in control and if the individual agency will be possible. But the main goal is to target in a mutual creation from the actors and shifting the emphasis from ownership to more interesting relations and equality.
In this context, we talk about a speculation of assigning agency to the machines, as an extreme hypothesis in order to bring discussion. But the truth is that we create the machines and we make them move, imposing intelligence, creativity and other human characteristics. “It is not whether machines are intelligent […] but whether computers can solve problems that have traditionally been regarded as requiring intuitive knowledge and creativity” (Hayles, 2005) (p. 142). We have the notion that if a machine acts cognitively sophisticated then it must be better than us. It is in human nature to engage with mediation and to appeal by human-like robots because of the uncanny valley phenomenon that described by Masahiro Mori in 1970. The graph (Figure 4) depicts this relationship between the human likeness of an element and the perceiver’s affinity for this entity. It is like children’s confusion over the computer’s aliveness. They know that they are not real, but they have the tendency to attribute them personality, because of the cognitive abilities of the computers to process information.
Embodiment and Materiality
Hayles (1999) claims that there is intelligence embodied in cybernetic machines and this unfolds in different ways, a contrast to human awareness (p. 284). She also argues that “embodiment cannot exist without the material structure” (Hayles, 1999) (p. 199). In other words, we need embodied creatures that enact intelligence, because there is the superiority of the moving embodied robots, compared with the digital algorithms, which have no moving capability and are not able to discover their environment. (Hayles, 1999) (p. 199). This ideology changes embodied experiences. New material structures that have dancing qualities inspire the human dancers. Whoever participates constitutes an embodied informational entity. When these entities cooperate, they create a system. For example, both the human performer and the robot, create individual systems which observe and impact each other. These systems are also observed from an external system, like the audience, that is called to give its input in this performative co-creation.
Betti Marenko and Philip van Allen investigate the animistic design, a research through making approach, that based on the uncertain and unpredictable tries to reimagine the interaction between the human and the non-human. “The notion of animism we propose draws on ideas of effect, agency (both human and non-human) and the material relationality of interactive ecosystems, thus moving away from the anthropomorphism.” Following their one examples, we can allow the interaction to develop with a creative and unlimited process, so as to communicate with complexity in an embodied manner, to raise questions and generate discussion between designers for alternative futures.
Interaction and Unpredictability
So, “first comes the embodies materiality and then the concepts evolve through interaction with the environment” (Hayles, 1999) (p. 263), or other actants. Hayles also refers to the concept of randomness, which plays an important role in the evolution of complex systems and she questions for the kinds of the environments that are going to be created because of them (p. 286–287). Randomness is really important in the context of dancing and improvisation. This is one of the factors that create an interesting performance which is going to differ from one time to another, depended on the random choices and moods of the dancer and the robot.
André Décosterd (2018), one of the two creators of the πTon (Figure 5) discuss that the five segments of the long rubber tube are triggered to move by the motors’ movement that follows the twisting of the material. The choice of the motor to move combined with the random place and angle of the whole structure the specific time can create this unpredictable movement. The creature is surrounded by a group of human beings equipped with vocal prostheses. In this way, André and Michel Décosterd using their artistic practice, prove the theories of Hayles (1999), for “complex interactions within an environment that includes human and non-human actors” (p. 288).
In the context of dancing performance, the robot, choosing its movements with a combination of inputs and randomness, can give inspiration to the human dancer, because of the combination of rhythm, posture and movement quality, that probably the human partner never imagined before. And on the other hand, this co-performance opens the possibility that the movements can be taken out of the human body and placed into a machine. It is a surprising discovery to take human’s dancing qualities out of the body and put them into a machine, where they can manipulate in a way that the human had never danced before.
In the animism framework, the same norms take place, trying to reimagine interaction with objects and reformulating agential issues. “Animistic design focuses on experimenting with designed ecologies where the actors engaged (objects, prototypes, humans, data and things) affect each other in ways that allow not only uncertainty and unpredictability to emerge but to capitalize on them as a resource to trigger creativity.” In this way, the more agency we allow the robots to manifest, the more uncertainty and unpredictable they will show to be. Nevertheless, we should not forget that the machines have not really the agency, because we construct and operate them. So, they are not really unpredictable as if we watch them carefully, then we can predict their complex movements.
Black Flags
William Forsythe has been researching and working on interactive sculptures that he called Choreographs Objects. He is questioning “Is it possible for choreography to generate autonomous expressions of its principles, a choreographic object, without the body?”, but also “What else, besides the body, could physical thinking look like?” (Forsythe, 2011). He supports that a choreographic object is not acting in place of the body, but instead as an alternative entity that suggests new potential kinetics and motions. He is trying to offer insight into choreographic ideas that would defend from the countless manifestations of the choreographic thinking.
One of his Choreographic Objects is the Black Flags (Figure 6), a duet for two industrial robots that wave enormous black flags. The waving flags are programmed to move with gestural movements that control them and make their motion seems like unpredictable. These non-anthropomorphic machines seem like they have life and move like dancing. The noise of the industrial robots and their ability to create these continuous movements create a spectacular performance for the audience, that feel like gazing a living object.
Nyloïd
Nyloïd (Figure 7) is the result of a continues research on mechanical devices which have the ability to move in an organic, unpredictable and harmonious way. These artists’ main argument, that comes through experimentation, is that the complexity of an organic mechanical movement comes from the addition of many different constraints, like compression or twisting, but also from strengths that act at the same time in various directions. Their approach consists of a synthesis of many parts, such as the materials and their mechanics, the structures and their kinetic energies, the movement and musical synchronization, but also the musical composition. Their work is an “impressive sound sculpture, a tripod consisting of three nylon limbs of six meters in length animated by a sophisticated mechanical and sound device”. This installation draws its dramatic power from the reactivity of its plastic and sound material, expressing a threatening narrative. Similar to a living object, it’s tension, effort and suffering, which result from its contortions and its vocal manifestation, can be sensed.
This project represents a lot of the terms that we discussed above, for the imposing of unpredictability and agency in the machines. Under the label Cod.Act, the two artists André and Michel Décosterd are always interested in exploring the sense of object agency. Nyloïd is a chaotic element that is not choreographed, but it moves with perfectly random kinetics. It hides a narrative that it is interesting and makes you think that it is alive.
Motive Colloquies
Motive Colloquies (Figure 8) is a performative and interactive installation that developed by interaction designers, architects and performance artists. The project’s research area focuses on the fact that as computation dominate our built environment, our virtual and physical worlds are becoming hybrids. Our buildings are playing an important role in our daily life and our emotions. In this concept, the buildings are becoming robots and communicate with us through their own gestures. Based on these ideas, they create an aluminium robot that is static like a tower structure at the beginning. However, as people draw closer, it appears to be a living and sociable creature that comes to life. Robot’s movements are uncanny, like a human in motion, but inhuman in form. This project examines the design of kinetic and dynamic architecture, creating a robot that interacts with the audience through gestures and co-create with the human performers.
Omnia per Omnia
This project (Figure 9) by Sougwen Chung is a painting performance by the artist and a robotic swarm. Its topic is connected to the flow of a city. Specifically, this project “reimagines the tradition of landscape painting as a collaboration between an artist, a robotic swarm, and the dynamic flow of a city”. Sougwen investigates different oppositions such as physical and mechanical or improvisational and computational. She collaborates with a swarm of custom-designed drawing robots, creating a drawing collaborative performance with multiple agencies of a human and machine, complex relations and plural identities. It is also originated from different debates, such as “Are we at the onset of a new, collaborative imagination — of radical new intersubjectivities? What does it mean to collaborate with the spaces we inhabit, the tools we build? Where does ‘I’ end and ‘we’ begin?”.
The robots seem like respect their human partner and she also shares the same amount of agency with them. In this way, they create a harmonic co-performance as an equal creative entity, forming a kind of team. Sougwen thinks beyond dichotomies allowing this coupling of the human sensorium with the non-human worlds.
To conclude
Where is the line between human and non-human in this context? Is there any hierarchy? They are made of us, but they are automated. Perhaps the most significant criterion of evaluation is to bring discussion about what an ‘alive’ machine is or what it could become in the future and also if we want to live with one.
On the other hand, I found out the problematics in the use of the terms of aliveness, creativity and intelligence.“A robot is a cultural construct, with much of what it is and what it can do arising from the human cultural environment, rather than the robot itself” (Gemeinboeck, Saunders, 2015). Maybe we should consider the fact that we impose creativity on a machine because of cultural and perceptual factors. Through my practice, I want to explore how I can visualize my hypothesis about assigning agency and randomness to a machine and make it look alive, so as to co-create with a human entity. Is the robot bringing something new to the performance? Additionally, in terms of agency, the distinction of who is responding to whom is going to be complicated and difficult to reveal.
We have the tendency to attribute personality to devices because it is easier with this way to explain behaviour. My work aims to create debate, uncertainty and empathy for ‘alive’ machines, without creating an idolatry for them, but setting the principles for collaboration and potentiality of interaction with these entities. This research can be extended in terms of autonomous, autopoietic and self-organizing machines or machine learning algorithms, neural networks and artificial intelligent agents. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that all these sophisticated machines, are biased and result of human programming. But we can discuss further and design interesting connections and interactions with these convincingly ‘alive’ robots. Instead of looking at them as tools, we can try to face them as equal collaborators and see what new creative ideas we can develop with them.
Bibliography
Cariani, P. (1993). To evolve an ear. Epistemological implications of Gordon Pask’s electrochemical devices. Systems Research, [online] 10(3), pp.19–33. Available at: http://www.cariani.com/CarianiNewWebsite/Cybernetics_files/PaskDevice93-SelfOrganizingSystems.pdf [Accessed 10 Jul. 2018].
Décosterd, A. and Décosterd, M. (2018). πTon. [online] Cod.Act. Available at: http://codact.ch/works/%CF%80ton-2/ [Accessed 21 Sep. 2018].
Décosterd, A. and Décosterd, M. (2013). Nyloïd. [online] Codact.ch. Available at: http://codact.ch/works/nyloid/ [Accessed 10 Jul. 2018].
Dunne, A. and Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Dunne, A. and Raby, F. (2007). TECHNOLOGICAL DREAMS SERIES: NO.1, ROBOTS, 2007. [online] Dunneandraby.co.uk. Available at: http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/projects/10/0 [Accessed 21 Sep. 2018].
Forsythe, W. (2011). Choreographic Objects: Black Flags. [online] Williamforsythe.com. Available at: https://www.williamforsythe.com/installations.html?&pid=4&count=10&no_cache=1&detail=1&uid=62 [Accessed 10 Jul. 2018].
Glynn, R. (2011). Motive Colloquies. [online] Ruairiglynn.co.uk. Available at: http://www.ruairiglynn.co.uk/portfolio/motive-colloquies-2011/ [Accessed 10 Jul. 2018].
Haraway, D., J. (1991). Simians, cyborgs and women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books.
Hayles, N., K. (1999). How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Hayles, N. (2005). Computing the Human. Theory, Culture & Society, 22(1), pp.131–151.
Kelly, K. (2014). What technology wants. New York: Penguin Books.
Koskinen, I., Zimmerman, J., Binder, T., Resdtrom, J. and Wensveen, S. (2012). Design research through practice. Waltham, MA: Morgan Kaufmann/Elsevier.
Latour, B. (2017). On Actor-Network Theory. A Few Clarifications, Plus More Than a Few Complications. Philosophical Literary Journal Logos, [online] 27(1), pp.173–197. Available at: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/P-67%20ACTOR-NETWORK.pdf [Accessed 21 Sep. 2018].
Marenko, B. and van Allen, P. (2016). Animistic design: how to reimagine digital interaction between the human and the nonhuman. Digital Creativity, [online] 27(1), pp.52–70. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14626268.2016.1145127 [Accessed 21 Sep. 2018].
Mori, M. (1970). The uncanny valley. Energy, 7(4), pp. 33–35.
Parikka, J. (2010). What is New Materialism-Opening words from the event. [online] Machinology. Available at: https://jussiparikka.net/2010/06/23/what-is-new-materialism-opening-words-from-the-event/ [Accessed 10 Jul. 2018].
Simondon, G. (1958). On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. Paris: Aubier, Editions Montaigne.
Sougwen, C. (2018). Omnia per Omnia. [online] Sougwen.com. Available at: http://sougwen.com/project/omniaperomnia [Accessed 10 Jul. 2018].
Superflux. (2015). Uninvited Guests. [online] Available at: http://superflux.in/index.php/work/uninvited-guests/ [Accessed 24 Sep. 2018].
Universal Everything. (2018). Hype Cycle: Machine Learning. [online] Available at: http://universaleverything.com/projects/hype-cycle-machine-learning [Accessed 21 Sep. 2018].
