Abstract
Representations of gender in new technologies like the Siri, Pepper, and Sophia robotic assistants, as well as the commodification of features associated with gender on platforms like Instagram, inspire questions about how and whether robotic tools can have gender and what it means to people if they do. One possible response to this is through artistic creation of dance performance. This paper reports on one such project where, along the route to this inquiry, creation of machine augmentation – of both the performer and audience member – was necessary to communicate the artistic ideas grappled with therein. Thus, this article describes the presentation of Babyface, a machine-augmented, participatory contemporary dance performance. This work is a reaction to feminized tropes in popular media and modern technology, and establishes a parallel between the ways that women and machines are talked about, treated, and – in the case of machines – designed to look and behave. This paper extends prior reports on the creation of this piece and its accompanying devices to describe extensions with audience member participation, and reflect on the responses of these audience members. These fabricated elements alongside the actions of the performer and a soundscape that quotes statements made by real “female” robots create an otherwordly, sad cyborg character that causes viewers to question their assumptions about and pressures on the feminine ideal.
Highlights
Tools have long been a part of performance
This public presentation of art was not a systematic user study; we provide reflections on the robotic installation and accompanying performance, offering a creative perspective on this work as well as insight into design challenges
A challenge when working with bespoke robotics in tandem with choreography is the distinct inertia of elements of the work
Summary
Tools have long been a part of performance. For example, we are familiar with a knife in the hands of an enemy signaling danger for a protagonist. Many of the tools we use today, smart phones, computers, and fitness trackers, and the tools we may use tomorrow, household assistants, robotic prosthetics, and self-driving cars, have not been explored as much in dance performances Many of these tools have hidden internal workings and do not yet exist, requiring new strategies, characters, and perspectives for incorporating them into dances. We review prior literature that has explored the intersection of gender and technology, human augmentation with machines through embodied design, and robots inside live and installationbased art In her seminal text The Cyborg Manifesto, Haraway (2006), Donna Haraway states:. Our work responds to this implied expectation: that we ought to move and present as machines suggest This feminine ideal, in turn, is performed by robots and coded by their creators, reinforcing patriarchy and bringing it more deeply into the realm of the physical
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