Robiotope (Gilda Coustier, Frieder Miller & Mark Mushiva / MANUFAKTOR)

Our project is an exploration of the simple rules of nature and how they permeate in computer systems, ultimately suggesting that humans are a bootloader specie that is extending its naturality through synthetic systems as it becomes conscious of itself and its role in planetary ambition. In our project, the aim is to entreat the visitor to observe a microcosm of bio-mechanical robotic systems, which we call the Robiotope, and contemplate their own agency and affect on what they are seeing and hearing. We use a series of interactive tools and technologies to tease a delicate human-machine conversation whereby either entity has an opportunity to learn something about itself, the other, or nothing at all.

During our research, we want to work on the interaction of robotic and human bodies in theatrical spaces. Manufaktor is a puppet theater collective that has been working with robotic bodies for years.

As puppeteers we know the simultaneity of actively influencing the play of the puppet/object and in turn passively observing it. We are interested in this balancing of perspectives and we want to transfer this to the robotic future of theater.

Translating the puppeteer’s arm into data.

The goal is to enable an artistic symbiosis between humans and robots. Away from the dystopian narratives that cultivate the human/machine divide. Away from the “uncanny valley” of humanoid robots towards a self-empowerment of robotic bodies.

We are interested in the emotive power enabled by new interactive technologies like computer vision and generative synthesis and how the allow us to feel an emotional effect as we explore spaces where they are implemented and what that will mean for the future of technology and public space

The installation “Robiotope” builds on our performance ‘1/0/1 robots – hacking the binary code’. We want to develop our setup further. The stage set with the LED strips attached to it, which serves as a space for the 6 self-balancing robots with LED matrix, as well as, 2 live cameras and projector. The goal is a experimental, playful and exploratory ways in which people might try to appropriate the installation, the emergent complexity between control and speculation and ultimately the balance that is negotiated between human agency and the ungovernable natural world of which machines are now a part of.