Cultures of Robotics Symposium Keynote Speaker
Professor Simon Penny
Simon Penny has worked as an artist, theorist, teacher and organiser in Digital Cultural Practices, Embodied Interaction, Interactive and Robotic Art for 25 years. His works involve custom robotic and sensor systems including novel machine vision systems. His art and writing address critical issues arising around enactive and embodied interaction, informed by traditions of practice in the arts including sculpture, video-art, installation and performance, and by ethology, cognitive science, phenomenology, human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, robotics, critical theory, cultural studies, media studies and Science and Technology Studies. He founded the Arts Computation Engineering interdisciplinary graduate program (ACE) at University of California, Irvine. He was previously Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon.
Statement of interest in field of robotics: As a sculpture student my interests were with installation and performance and with machines and devices that exhibited behavior. Exposure to works such as Jack Burnham’s Beyond Modern Sculpture were formative. Through the 80s, I pursued motor actuated and sensor activated projects, and engaged discrete-component process control electronics, formulating an approach to interactive art long before PC based ‘interactive multimedia’. My appointment as Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in the early 90s exposed me to cutting edge robotics and AI. I found that the sensibilities of my art practice were relevant to and challenging of conventional ideas. I engaged the technologies as well as critique theoretical bases, developing a series of interventionist works focusing on embodied interaction in which development of custom technologies was integral to the aesthetico-theoretical goals. These inquires have led me deeper into engagement with artificial life, phenomenology and embodied cognitive science.
www.ace.uci.edu/Penny
Symposium Committee Members
Kathy Cleland
Kathy Cleland is a curator, writer and researcher specialising in new media art and digital culture. She is Director and Senior Lecturer in the Digital Cultures Program at The University of Sydney, an innovative cross-disciplinary program that critically investigates the social and cultural impacts of new digital media technologies. Her curatorial projects include the Cyber Cultures exhibition series which toured to over 20 venues in Australia and New Zealand from 2000 – 2003, the Mirror States exhibition (2008) at MIC Toi Rerehiko, Auckland, NZ and Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney, and Face to Face: portraiture in a digital age for d/Lux/MediaArts, a digital portraiture exhibition currently touring Australia and Asia (2008-2011). Research interests in the area of robotics include: researching case studies of artists using robotics; human and non-human performativity and agency; the uncanny valley; audience interaction; audience responses to robotic and screen-based entities; theatrical presentations of robots.
www.kathycleland.com
Mari Velonaki
Mari is a media installation artist who has worked in the field of interactive installation art since 1995. Since 2003, Mari has been working as an artist/ researcher at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics. In 2006, with Dr David Rye, she co-founded the Centre for Social Robotics within the ACFR, at the University of Sydney.
Why I am interested in culture of robotics: My research and practice investigates intimate human-machine interactions in order to develop an understanding of the physicality that is possible between a human and a robot. I am equally interested in creating both “representational” and “non-representational” robotic forms in order to initiate physical contact with a human. In my work, communication between a human and a robot is established through movement and expressive touch mediated by the use of poetic text. The aim of my projects is to explore and understand the degree of engagement—intellectual, emotional and physical—that is possible between a human and a robot.
www.csr.acfr.usyd.edu.au/people/MariVelonaki.htm
David Rye
David Rye works in embedded and applied control of machinery, and in the design and implementation of computer-controlled systems. Coming from a background in mechanical engineering, he now works principally on computer-controlled machinery, electronics, software and systems design. Since 2003 he has worked on human-robot interaction in a media arts context. In 2006 he co-founded, with Mari Velonaki, the Centre for Social Robotics within the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney. David is also internationally recognised as a pioneer in the introduction and development of university teaching in mechatronics, having instituted the first Australian Bachelor of Engineering in mechatronics in 1990.
www.csr.acfr.usyd.edu.au/people/DavidRye.htm
Chris Chesher
Chris Chesher is a scholar of technology and cultural change. He is Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures in SLAM at the University of Sydney. His research project is Following Robots, an ethnographic investigation of robot research and practice based mainly at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR). Following Robots is part of the Cultures of Robotics collaboration between Digital Cultures program in SLAM and the Centre for Social Robotics at the ACFR. His previous work has included articles on player-screen relationships in computer games; uses of mobile phones at a U2 gig; media, materiality and time (Harold Innis); and computers as invocational media.
http://sydney.edu.au/arts/digital_cultures/staff/chrchesh/
http://usyd.academia.edu/ChrisChesher
http://followingrobots.wordpress.com
John Tonkin
John Tonkin is a Sydney based media artist who began making experimental film and video in the early 1980′s and started working with new media in 1985. In 1999-2000 he received a fellowship from the Australia Council’s New Media Arts Board. His work explores interactivity as a site for physical and mental play. Recent projects have used real-time 3d animation, visualisation and data-mapping technologies and custom built and programmed electronics. His works have often involved building frameworks / tools / toys within which the artwork is formed through the accumulated interactions of its users. These include Strange Weather (2005), a visualisation tool for making sense of life, and time and motion study (2008). John currently lectures within the Digital Cultures Program, at the University of Sydney and is undertaking a practice based PhD at COFA, UNSW. His current research is around cybernetics, embodied perception and embedded cognition. He is building a number of nervous robots that embody computational models of mind and responsive environments that form a kind of dynamically coupled enactive perceptual apparatus.
www.johnt.org
Symposium Participants
Anne Balsamo
(School of Cinematic Arts, USC)
Stephen Barrass
Stephen Barrass is an Associate Professor in Digital Design and Media Arts at the University of Canberra. His interest in Cultures of Robotics comes through experiments with embedding personality and narrative into objects. Some examples of his work include ZiZi the Affectionate Couch (2004) now in the collection of the Museum of Old and New Art, Fauxy the Fake Fur with Feelings curated for the Touch exhibition (2009), Scruffy Scallyrag developed through the ANAT reskin Lab 2007 and curated for Who Let the Dogs Out (2008), and Flotsam, Jetsam and Lagan curated for the NIME exhibition in Sydney (2010).
Kirsty Boyle
Kirsty Boyle is an Australian artist whose passion for robots has driven her to travel the world in order to work with other like-minded puppeteers, animators and roboticists. During 2002, Kirsty began study under Mr Tamaya Shobei, a ninth generation Karakuri Ningyo craftsman and last remaining mechanical doll Master in Japan. She is currently his only student, and the only woman to have ever been trained in the tradition. She is now considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on Karakuri. She has been based in Zurich for the past three years, completing an artist residency at the AI Lab, University of Zurich and is an active member of SGMK (Swiss Mechatronic Art Society).In 2010 she produced Tree Ceremony, commissioned by the Museum Tinguely and Kunsthaus Graz for the Robot Dreams exhibition, touring 2010 – 2011. In association with Dock18 she also developed ‘love the robots’ – a showcase combining media art, network performance, informal lecture and discussion centred around the theme of robots, contemporary art, culture and society.
Her art portfolio can be viewed online via http://www.onnai.com
Iain Brown
I am currently researching as a PhD candidate in the field of Human-Robot Interactions focusing particularly on the role of affect in these interactions. Prior to enrolling as a research student I worked as a technical officer at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics. My background is in Aerospace Engineering but I have a deep interest across a broad range of fields including psychology, neurology and physiology. I believe these fields offer essential insights for the future of robotics.
Research Interests Systems which are comprised of human and robotic agents pose novel and exciting challenges for researchers from numerous disciplines. Engineers and designers must collaborate with their colleagues in the humanities in order to develop robotic agents that are able to integrate into society. Achieving social integration requires that robotic agents operate in ways which are intuitive, appropriate and meet social expectations, such as perceiving and responding to emotive cues. Identifying and classifying the emotive responses of human agents will provide valuable insight for determining intentions, which in turn will provide necessary contextual information to help guide further interactions. In an effort to distinguish emotional states various techniques including facial pattern analysis, vocal pattern analysis, and biometric signal analysis are being explored. These techniques look for linkages between different emotive states and physical response with the hope that unique combinations of physical response will signify particular emotive states. Using these linkages it will be possible to infer emotive state from physical response. Incorporating this ability into robotic agents will allow for more appropriate and intuitive interactions, bringing the concept of socially integrated robotics one step closer to realisation.
Alessio Cavallaro
Alessio Cavallaro is an independent artistic director and curator of exhibitions and events, primarily in film, video, media, and sound arts. From 2000–2010, Alessio was Senior Curator at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne, where he produced more than 20 major exhibitions, including the acclaimed Transfigure (2003), SenseSurround (2004), Pixar: 20 Years of Animation (2007), Len Lye (2009), and Bill Viola’s The Raft and The Tristan Project (2010). From 1997–2000, Alessio was founding Director of dLux media arts, Sydney, where he initiated a number of innovative projects including the annual events d>art and futureScreen. He was co-curator of ISEA 92 (Sydney), and has served on numerous boards, including the Sydney Film Festival and the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. Publications include Prefiguring Cyberculture (MIT Press 2003; co-editor). Alessio’s research interests in robotics include human-robot interaction; robot emotion, intelligence and agency; and robots in performative and exhibition contexts.
Alan Cholodenko
Dr Alan Cholodenko is former Head of Department and Senior Lecturer in Film and Animation Studies in the Department of Art History and Film Studies at the University of Sydney, where he is now Honorary Associate. He has pioneered in the articulation of film theory, animation theory and ‘poststructuralist’ and ‘postmodernist’ French thought, especially the work of Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida. He organized THE ILLUSION OF LIFE—the world’s first international conference on animation—in 1988; edited the book of that event—The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation—the world’s first book of scholarly essays theorizing animation, published in 1991; organized THE LIFE OF ILLUSION—Australia’s second international conference on animation—in 1995; and edited The Illusion of Life 2: More Essays on Animation, published in 2007. He has published and lectured widely on animation theory in Australia and overseas. His essay, ‘Speculations on the Animatic Automaton’, in The Illusion of Life 2 considers animation in terms of animism and mechanism, automata, robots and cyborgs, with a section on Blade Runner.
Cecelia Cmielewski
Cecelia Cmielewski is Manager, Cultural Engagement Initiatives with Community Partnerships of the Australia Council for the Arts and oversees all policy areas of Council included in the Cultural Engagement Framework. She is Partner Investigator on the ARC Linkage Project, ‘Large Screens and Transnational Public Sphere’. Recent presentations include at the Sixth Diversity Matters forum, Singapore (2010); World Forum Venice, International Association of Environmental Scientists (2009); and International Symposia for Electronic Arts : Belfast (2009). I am interested in the potential for new perspectives on interactivity that the field of robotics may have to offer.
Matthew Connell
Matthew Connell is currently Principal Curator Physical Sciences & IT at the Powerhouse Museum and has been curator of computing and mathematics at the Museum since 1991. As well as collecting in those fields he has developed exhibitions and programs relating to robotics and AI. He research interests in computing histories and human computer interaction includes robots and robotics. He is currently working on a project at the museum in conjunction with the UNSW Centre for Astrobiology and the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) to set up a Mars landscape and associated robotics laboratory to involve high school students in engineering and science research practice.
Anna Davis
(Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art; artist)
Paula Dawson
Paula Dawson is an artist, researcher and Associate Professor at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney where she teaches drawing. Paula has worked primarily with analogue and digital holograms since the late 70s collaborating with many international institutions including Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she was a Fellow as the centre for Advance Visual Studies. Her academic research has focused on transposing pictorial qualities, which are key agencies of historical art to the three-dimensional holographic image environment. Paula’s current research involves the development of virtual tools and process for using the Haptic interface, the Phantom, for making hand drawn content for CGH (computer generated holograms) and real time holographic video.
http://www.shadowyfigures.com
http://www.pauladawson.com
Bec Dean
(Associate Director, Performance Space)
Linda Dement
Linda Dement is a Sydney based artist who has worked in arts computing since 1989 with a background in photography, film, and video. Her interactive and still image work has been widely exhibited internationally and locBec Deanally, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Ars Electronica in Austria, the International Symposia of Electronic Art in Sydney and Montreal and the Impakt Media Arts Festival in Europe. She is twice winner of the Australian National Digital Art Award (the Harries), has been awarded a New Media Arts Fellowship by the Australia Council for the Arts. She is a member of the collaborative groups In Serial and Bump Projects.
“Dement’s gift is to turn polymorphous perversity to aesthetic ends, let it run free and enjoy itself. The sacred and the savage, sexuality and abuse, are her private square of opposition.” – George Alexander, Art Monthly
Areas of Interest in the field of Robotics: Agency and intent in interactions between non-human participants. Robots within a context of the self organising nature of the phenomenal world. Embodiment as complex connected fields of intensities, patterns, drives and desires. Working relationships between artists and robots that is about adaptation, entrainment and mutual co-arising, rather than control.
Claire D’Este
Claire D’Este is a researcher with the Tasmanian ICT Centre, CSIRO working with marine robot and human interaction. She gained her PhD in human-robot communication from the University of New South Wales and Sony CSL, Paris. Claire is also a playwright / screenwriter currently writing a play involving robot and human actors.
Areas of Interest: I am an artificial intelligence/machine learning researcher working in language learning, lifelong learning and human interaction in robots. As well as working professionally in this area, I am interested in robot theatre and robot art installations, which I work on in my free time.
Andy Dong
Associate Professor Andy Dong is the Program Director for the Bachelor of Design Computing program in the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney. He is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow researching inventiveness and the progress of product innovation. His interest in the Symposium is curricular – to identify teaching and learning opportunities for ‘creative’ roboticists.
Andrew Donovan
Andrew Donovan is Director of the Australia Council’s Inter-Arts Office, with responsibility to nurture artists working within interdisciplinary and hybrid arts as well as develop policy initiatives that progress the practice in Australia. He is also leading and developing the Inter-Arts Office focus on practice-led arts research. He has extensive experience across the arts having worked as an actor, playwright, writer, researcher facilitator and arts administrator. Andrew joined the Australia Council in 1994 working initially in community cultural development and was Manager of Council’s New Media Arts Board from 2001 until is dissolution in 2005. More recently, Andrew has been developing and implementing major initiatives such as the cross-disciplinary art/science initiative Synapse, the interdisciplinary ArtLab research and development initiative, the Connections Residency program and the first artist residency at the Allosphere at the University of California, be offered to Australian artists in 2011. My interest in robotics is obviously from a perspective of the arts, particularly in how collaborations between artists, scientists and technologists can lead to new and engaging art works that involve robotics. The Australia Council has funded artists working in this field over a number of years, but for me an emerging and exciting area of practice explores how audiences and communities can be engaged more interactively or as co-creators in the development or presentation of work.
Fran Dyson
Frances Dyson is a writer and scholar of media arts, culture and philosophy. She is the author Sounding New Media: Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture (University of California Press, 2009) and Professor emeritus of Technocultural Studies, UC Davis.
Paul Gazzola
Paul Gazzola operates an interdisciplinary practice of over 20 years at the interface of art, architecture, performance and theory in the creation of performances, texts, videos, set designs and multi-media installations for stages, galleries and site-specific settings as well as in various dramaturgical and curatorial roles. Since 1988 an extensive body of work has seen presentations and commissions for festivals in Australia, South Africa, South America, Japan, Canada and throughout Europe. Originally trained as a carpenter, he has a BA in Performance, is a qualified Feldenkrais practitioner and in 2004 commenced studies in architecture. Subsequently his work reflects an interest in the social, cultural and political relationship between the body and the built form. In 2007 he was an Australian Asialink Artist in Residence at Future University, Japan researching into the areas of artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems and evolutionary robots and a new project in the making, Teaching a New Dog, Old Tricks in collaboration with the French artist Paul Granjon is the outcome of these investigations. Teaching a New Dog, Old Tricks investigates the co-evolution of humans and machines against the blurry edge between backyard mechanics and credible science and will premiere at Campbelltown Arts Centre in 2012.
www.paulgazzola.blogspot.com
Petra Gemeinboeck
Petra Gemeinboeck is Senior Lecturer at COFA, UNSW. Her practice in robotic, locative, interactive, and immersive installation implicates participants in the production of hybrid spaces and performative realities. In 2008, Petra co-founded the artist group In Serial and, in 2009, the arts & science collaboration robococo. Her works have been exhibited internationally, including the Ars Electronica, Thessaloniki Biennale, MCA Chicago, ICC Tokyo and the Centre des Arts Enghien at Paris.
Areas of interest: My collaborative practice with Rob Saunders (robococo) explores the anatomical trauma of machine-augmented environments and its performative potential. Our installation Zwischenräume structurally couples robots with walls and turns our built environment into the machines’ milieu to sense, communicate and proactively intervene. Being intrinsically curious, the walls become the audience of the audience, as it is not only the machinic wall that performs, but also the audience that provokes, entertains and fuels its desires. My interest in working with robotics is to explore embodied agency and how within a specific artistic context, computational approach and audience involvement this agency can become machinic performativity. The aim is to destabilise our environment and our relationship with it by injecting a process into it; a process that is both material and immaterial. The resulting machine-augmented environment turns architecture into a milieu, a dynamic, operative medium. I’m particularly interested in embodied, autonomous agents that sense, learn, act and adapt in a self-motivated manner, and the mutual relationship between these agents and their environment (incl. human inhabitants). As the agents negotiate and express their desires, they interfere with and change their environment and, consequently, alter the milieu for their desires to evolve.
www.robococo.net
Ross Rudesch Harley
Ross Rudesch Harley is an artist, writer, and educator in the field of new media and popular culture. His work crosses the bounds of media art practice, cinema, music, design, and architecture. He is Professor and Head of the School of Media Arts , College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales.
http://cofa.unsw.edu.au/schoolsunits/schools/mediaarts/
In Serial
In Serial formed during the first European Mobile Lab for Interactive Media Artists (eMobilArt) workshop, in Athens 2008. In Serial members: Linda Dement, Petra Gemeinboeck, PRINZGAU/podgorschek and Marion Tränkle, draw on backgrounds in architecture, choreography, dance, theatre, arts computing, sculptural installation, photography and interaction design. Our work, its conception and articulation, has emerged from some of the seaming elements of these diverse fields: the performativity of movement, the interaction of movements, and their metonymic relations to culture, technology and society. As a group we are interested in the machinic, the electronic, robotics, systems theory, uncontrollable fluids and escalating generative interactions between non-human protagonists. Our work pushes at notions of interaction and agency and utilises materials apparently contra-indicated. In Serial has produced the work On Track; a performative installation involving a pendulous mechanical system, trapped robotic brushes and spilling viscous fluids. A disaster-prone scenario unfolds as the protagonists, apparently set to clean, spill, interfere with and hinder each other, creating an ever more slippery mess in intricately choreographed ways.
Benjamin Johnston
Benjamin Johnston is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Innovation and Enterprise Research Laboratory at the University of Technology, Sydney. His research interests include artificial commonsense reasoning, knowledge representation and cognitive software architectures, with particular emphasis on their application to robotic technology and ‘smarter living’.
Areas of interest in robotics: I developed an interest in robotics through several years of involvement in the RoboCup Standard Platform League (using humanoid robots), through the development of a distributed control system for a robot bear and through the creation of a number of robot-human dance performances. My research interest in robotics is the challenge of representing knowledge, dealing with complexity in the real world and gaining an understanding of the nature of thought and intelligence. Commonsense is closely related to our social context and I view commonsense as a crucial part of enabling robots to interact appropriately with the world and with other intelligent agents (such as humans!) in the world.
Stephen Jones
Stephen Jones is an Australian video artist of long standing. He provides technical support for artists and is interested in theoretical perspectives on artificial intelligence and interactive systems. Since 2002 he has been researching the archaeology and history of the electronic visual arts in Australia. This work will be published by MIT Press in April 2011. I am interested in the nature of interaction. There is little in the way of an adequate taxonomy of interactivity as it might be demonstrated through interactive art and what is in many ways its computer science parallel partner, robotics. My project is to develop a theory of interaction that can be applied not only to the behaviour of artworks but to Robotics, Computing systems and Artificial Intelligence. I am developing a collection of case-studies drawn from the history of Art and Technology, emphasising work produced in Australia. These case-studies offer a wide range of variance in the use of sensors, and the classes of interactions that have been implemented. New art works that implement interactions consistent with the more developed aspects of the taxonomy of interaction may then function as a laboratory for experiment in the further development of the kind of conversational interaction that will be necessary in Robotics and other human-machine interaction systems. The primary guide in any robotic interaction with humans that purports to be “intelligent” is that the machine element needs to be able to generate new behavioural repertoire in response to novel situations. The simplest examples are in way-finding and perhaps the most useful at the human level is in conversation. Top down structures for robotic interaction do not support this process. Some subsumption approaches may do so. My interest is in discovering new ways to support the generation of new repertoire.
Andra Keay
I am a Masters Dissertation student at the University of Sydney in the Digital Cultures Program, working in the area of Human-Robot Interaction. My project on ‘the Naming of Robots’ explores the ways in which robotics research cultures express identity and gender by examining empirical data from robot competitions integrated with a cultural studies of science approach. I studied Communications at UTS and the ABC, working as a film editor, multimedia artist and writer before moving into the area of technology for social justice, non-profit and educational purposes. I have been running science and robot workshops for children since 1995, including coaching competition teams in Moonbots, First Lego League and RoboCup Jnr.
Interest in Robotics: I am always interested in asking ‘what’s at stake?’ as Donna Haraway put it. Robotics for example is a highly gendered field, which is not obviously a requirement. Robots, as engineered (in)organisms, are not dependent on sexual differentiation, so gender in robotics culture is a fascinating expression of human engineering and how we create others. Ultimately, I am interested, much like Haraway is, in Derrida’s robotic cat.
http://andragy.com
http://robotstate.com
Sean Kerr
One of New Zealand’s leading digital artists, Kerr’s interests lie in the emergent area of new media technologies, incorporating internet art, installation and sonic practices, but with a particular focus on the expectations and effects of interactivity. This often includes ill-mannered scenarios and ‘misbehaving’ machines that owe as much to communication theory as slapstick comedy, exploring both social and technological dynamics. Sean Kerr has taught at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, since 2002 and is represented by Michael Lett.
http://seankerr.net
Wade Marynowsky
Wade Marynowsky is a hybrid media artist working across robotic, immersive and interactive installation, performance, music and video. Since 1998 Marynowsky has exhibited and performed extensively. Highlights in 2010 include being highly commended in The Premier of Queensland’s National New Media Art Award, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane and exhibiting in the International Biennale of Contemporary Art, Mediations Biennale, Poznan, Poland. In 2009 Marynowsky exhibited The Hosts: A Masquerade Of Improvising Automatons, at the Performance Space, Sydney and Autonomous Improvisation v.1 in Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. In 2008 he performed The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie Robot at The Institute of Contemporary Art Newtown (I.C.A.N), Sydney and exhibited The ministers are coming!, at the Inter Cross Creative centre, Sapporo, Japan. In 2007 Marynowsky travelled to Montréal, Canada to further research new artistic practice by studying robotic art at Hexagram (Institute for research/creation in media arts and technologies). From this research Marynowsky has developed the recent body of work, which explores ‘the uncanny automaton’.
www.marynowsky.net
Nancy Mauro-Flude
Nancy Mauro-Flude is a PhD candidate at the Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania. Her research engages with the history of theatre machines, digital materiality, theories of embodiment and points to the current renaissance of computer hacker culture and the automaton in contemporary art.
Areas of interest in the field of robotics: I am ever curious how the field of robotics and computational media can yield new potential understandings for theories of embodiment. My research in this area are speculations around the paradox of computing, theatre machines and play. An instance of this is ‘The Mechanical Turk’ – a hoax automated chess player who captured the imagination of an young Charles Babbage (among others). Thanks to the showmanship, ingenuity, and discretion of all of The Turk’s caretakers, he served not only to entertain audiences around the world, but in fact helped lay the groundwork for serious consideration in the realm of artificial intelligence. The choice of encoding tool and interface [software and hardware] are intrinsic to any communication platform, which always gives rise to new situations that must be tackled. I also like to stretch new interfaces into the realm of dream and the imagination, rip them from their function as a commonplace commodity or military inspired tool, allowing creative reflection and critical intelligent play.
Andrew Murphie
Andrew Murphie (University of New South Wales, Sydney) works at the junction of contemporary and future media and social change, cultural theory and theories of perception/the events of thinking. He also has interests in interaction design, electronic arts and music. He is the Editor of the open access, online journal, the Fibreculture Journal (http://fibreculturejournal.org/). He is also the co-author, with John Potts, of Culture and Technology. Recent chapter publications include: ‘Performance as the Distribution of Life: from Aeschylus to Chekhov to VJing via Deleuze and Guattari’, ‘Differential Life, Perception and the Nervous Elements..on the Technics of Living’, and ‘Deleuze, Guattari and Neuroscience’ and, with Lone Bertelsen, ‘An Ethics of Everyday Infinities and Powers: Félix Guattari on Affect and the Refrain’. Andrew also works with Anna Munster, Brian Massumi and Adrian Mackenzie on an Australian Research Council Discovery Project: Dynamic Media. He also works with Senselab in Montréal. His interest in robotics is in robots as (media/social) ecological shifters and complications of theories/events within the extended collectivity of perception/thinking.
http://www.andrewmurphie.org/
Clare Needham
Exhibition Program and Education Manager, Experimenta Media Arts
Clare Needham, is a key member of the curatorial team at Experimenta, working on the conception, production and management of exhibitions and special projects. Clare was a member of the curatorium for Experimenta Utopia Now, International Biennial of Media Art, which launched in Melbourne in 2010 and is touring nationally in 2010 – 2012. Clare has completed undergraduate and post-graduate studies in Fine Art (2001), Arts Management (2008) and Education (2004). Clare also manages Experimenta’s Education and Public Programs.
Experimenta’s interest in Robotics: Experimenta are interested in the growing trend of artists working with both low tech and highly complex robotic and ‘machine’ elements within their work. We are also interested in the uncanny valley concept in relation to unpacking the nature of the ever-narrowing gap between human and machine /robot/ technology. We are interested to explore this further within an exhibition context, and how this relates to contemporary art audiences. We are currently in the process of developing our next major International Biennial of Media art and suite of associated programs to launch in Melbourne in September, 2012, with these ideas in mind.
Rony Novianto
Rony Novianto is a PhD student at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. He leads the UTS Robot Soccer Team 2010 and receives an Endeavour Fellowship Award. He is a founding member of Biologically-Inspired Cognitive Architecture (BICA) society. His current research interests include cognitive autonomous robot and human-inspired mind. His passion is to create robot that can help human in daily lives.
http://www.ronynovianto.com
PRINZGAU/podgorschek
Based in Vienna Austria, Prinzgau/Podgerschek have worked together since 1984 in the field of experimental architecture/design, Film, Photo, art in public space. Discovery of corridors, the archaeology of highways was realized 1995 in Paasdorf-Mistelbach Lower Austria. Many art works in public space in Lower Austria, Vienna, Japan and France followed. The latest Tapis Rouge in the port of Dieppe/Normandy, France. 2008 Naked cinema, kino unter sternen, Augarten Vienna was a temporary cinema. Often the work is related to other sciences and exhibitions, film and books are made in an international context, like Weg mit dem Ziel, France/Austria; Lo(o)sgelöst Turkey, USA, Austria; Bite into Water NL, Austria; Sneaking in Japan, Austria or Autobahn and medien, Austria, Migration, Dieppe France, weg mit den ziel! FADENBRAND, nel fratempo…P/punti specialie a Venecia, FADENBRAND.
Maurice Pagnucco
Maurice Pagnucco is an Associate Professor and Head of the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW. He is a member of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Autonomous Systems which is a partnership between UNSW, University of Sydney and UTS. He is also a co-director of the UNSW iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research. His research is in the area of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning within the field of Artificial Intelligence. In particular, logics for artificial intelligence, belief change, cognitive robotics programming languages and approximate logics.
Mark Pesce
Mark Pesce is an inventor, writer, educator and broadcaster. In 1994 Pesce co-invented VRML, a 3D interface to the World Wide Web. Pesce has written five books, including The Playful World: How Technology is Transforming Our Imagination, which used toys such as Furby and PlayStation to explain our interactive future. As an educator, Pesce founded graduate programs in interactive media at both the University of Southern California’s world-famous Cinema School, and the Australian Film, Radio and Television School. For the last six years, Pesce has been a panelist and judge on the ABC’s hit series The New Inventors, as well as a regular commentator on technology and society for JJJ Hack, the 7.30 Report, the 7PM Project, and ABC Local Radio. In 2006, Pesce founded FutureSt, a Sydney consultancy dedicated to helping clients negotiate the challenges presented by our hyperconnected future.
Richard Salmon
Lecturer of Interactive Multimedia and Music technology for eight years in the UK. Head of School for Media and Sound at the City of Westminster College UK for two years. Granted permanent residency status to live in Australia in November 2008. Granted PhD performance research scholarship on the Thinking Head project Dec/Jan 2009/10. Richard is interested in Avatars, Agency and Performance with specific reference to The Fusion of Science and Technology in the Arts.
Rob Saunders
Rob Saunders is Senior Lecturer of Design Computing in the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. His research interests include the development of computational models of curiosity and artificial creative systems to explore the role of intrinsic motivation and novelty-seeking behaviour in creative design. My areas of interest in the field of robotics include the modelling of intrinsic motivation and the embodiment of creative behaviour. Over the past decade I have explored the role of intrinsic motivation in creative design by developing computational models of curiosity within simulations of individual, social and cultural creativity. Through my collaboration with Petra Gemeinboeck, collectively known as robococo, my research has extended to the development and application of models of curiosity for robotic artworks. The development of curious robots has great potential for supporting high levels of autonomy by motivating the search for novel experiences amenable to machine learning. For robococo’s latest work, Zwischenräume, we developed curious robots motivated to avoid boredom by visually exploring and materially changing their environment. In producing a robotic work that searches for novel events, we challenged the traditional role of artwork and audience; provoking the audience to innovate in their interactions to maintain the interest of the artwork.
www.robococo.net
Margaret Seymour
Margaret Seymour is an artist and academic at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. Her studio research is primarily concerned with technologies of vision and the perceptual and conceptual shifts associated with vision devices. She has exhibited site-specific installations in galleries and public spaces both in Australia and overseas.
Murray Sinclair
Murray is a Visiting Academic in the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) at the University of Sydney, exploring the assurance of ethical behaviour by deployed military robots. Murray is an ergonomist, working in collaboration with industry, initially automotive, and latterly aerospace. His focus is on socio-technical aspects such as engineering governance, the product-service shift, and human reliability.
Gavin Smith
Gavin Smith joined the University of Sydney as Lecturer in Sociology in July 2010 from City University London, UK. Gavin’s previous empirical research dealt with the sociology of surveillance, a topic centred around the investigation of how and why surveillance became such a key process in social organisation and the framing and influencing of social interaction and reality, and what implications this multi-dimensional force has for civic rights and participation, social justice and harmony. His current research investigates the mid-range interactivity between systems and subjects of surveillance, with particular focus on the interpretive meanings both actors place upon surveillance encounters/exchanges. This has led Gavin to develop an interest in Science and Technology Studies and in the growing social significance of robotics in surveillance applications, particularly in relation to policing and security and popular culture.
Yuji Sone
Dr Yuji Sone is a lecturer in the Department of Media, Music, Communication, and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University. Yuji is a Sydney-based Japanese artist who has produced numerous media-based performances and installations. His academic research focuses on mediated performance and performance of the body in conjunction with objects, space, and technology, especially from cross-cultural perspectives.
Statement of interest in robot culture: Approaches to human-robot relations within robotics, an area currently of great interest, often focus on design strategies and cognitive-perceptual studies. While human perception of the robot is discussed, it is often limited to the set-frame of each experiment to ascertain specific and necessary data. Theatre and performance studies, in contrast, offer useful tools to consider robots within socially interactive situations and complex contexts. I am interested in how a piece of machinery may function outside its understanding as an object by enmeshing itself within the viewer’s active imagination and the terms of its theatrical frame. In particular I have been examining Japanese robot entertainments for a popular audience, such as demonstration robot shows that feature Honda’s Asimo and Toyota’s Partner Robots as socially interactive agents within a performative mise-en-scene.
Michael Thielscher
Michael Thielscher is an ARC Future Fellow and a Professor at The University of New South Wales. His current research is mainly in Knowledge Representation, Cognitive Agents and Robots, General Game Playing, and Constraint Logic Programming. He is author of over 100 refereed scientific papers and four books, and he has co-authored the award-winning system FLUXPLAYER, which in 2006 was crowned the World Champion at the AAAI General Game Playing Competition. Michael’s main interest in robotics is to build systems that are endowed with general intelligence. This will provide a new generation of robots that can be told what we expect from them and that learn to carry out previously unknown tasks in varying environments.
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~mit/
Paul Thomas
Dr Paul Thomas, is currently Head of Painting at the College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales. Paul chair numerous international conferences and is the co-chair of the Transdisciplinary Imaging Conference 2010. In 2000 Paul instigated and was the founding Director of the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth. Paul has been working in the area of electronic arts since 1981 when he co-founded the group Media-Space. Media-Space was part of the first global link up with artists connected to ARTEX. From 1981-1986 the group was involved in a number of collaborative exhibitions and was instrumental in the establishment a substantial body of research. Paul’s current research project ‘Nanoessence’ explores the space between life and death at a nano level. The project is part of an ongoing collaboration with the Nanochemistry Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology and SymbioticA at the University of Western Australia. The previous project ‘Midas’ was researching at a nano level the transition phase between skin and gold. Paul has recently completed working on an intelligent architecture public art project for the Curtin Mineral and Chemistry Research Precinct. In 2009 he established Collaborative Research in Art Science and Humanity (CRASH) at Curtin. Paul is a practicing electronic artist whose work has exhibited internationally. My interest in robotics, media, art and science is related to the inscription of technologies on our bodies, we can see that emerging technologies do not simply happen to us but instead emerge out of a dynamic site of culture and critique.
http://crash.curtin.edu.au
http://www.visiblespace.com
Marion Traenkle
Marion Tränkle is an Amsterdam based artist and designer with a background in media art, architecture and choreography. Her ideas find their realization in the performance of home-grown machineries and interactive dramaturgies developed for the theatre context. Her interest lies in the performative and embodied interferences between the human and the human-a-like, life-like behaviour of robotic entities.
Wei Wang
Wei is a first-year PhD student in the Innovation and Enterprise research lab (the MagicLab) of UTS. Her research interests lie in the integration of web services and robotics. She is currently exploring the interaction and collaboration that occurs between robots playing soccer. In addition, she also would like to work on the field of applying the robot into healthcare related areas.
Xun Wang
Xun Wang is a third year PhD student at UTS. My research area is in knowledge representation/management in artificial intelligence. I was a member of our robot soccer team (wrighteagleunleashed!) for 2008 and 2010. My main interests in robotics are system design/integration of robot software and human-robotic interactions.
Sarah Waterson
Sarah Waterson is a senior lecturer in interactive media and Associate Head of School (Academic), School of Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, Australia. Her work deals with the influence of electronic technologies on subjectivities and how design as a discipline can inform practice and inter-disciplinary collaboration/s. Over the past twenty years she has produced and exhibited interactive environments nationally and internationally. Her recent publications include a book chapter in collaboration with Dr Juan Francisco Salazar: Play _Space; Conceptualizing Interactive Media for Community Participation. Danny Butt, Jonathan Bywater (eds) PLACE: Local Knowledge and New Media Practice, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008. Her current research and practice interests include data mapping, data ecologies and embodied media.
http://sarahwaterson.net