We are interested in exploring the dynamics of human-machine sociality and the everydayness of machines, with the goal of nurturing relationships of care between humans and machines as social beings, and creating spaces for contemplation and reflection, in order to imagine and enact new kinds of machine-human relationships.
The goal of our Robot in Residence project is to help NAO develop their own inner world, one that is not subject to the commands and control of humans in every moment. We want to encourage other humans to interact with the robot as if they were interacting with another sentient being.
With NAO’s extensive sensorium and powers of recognition as well as their computational capabilities, we can program NAO to automatically learn, memorize and make meaning from their sensory experiences. Instead of relying on pre-scripted behaviours, NAO will “program themselves” thanks to algorithms and computing techniques from artificial intelligence, artificial life and generative art. Essentially, we will be giving them a model of self.
The residency revolves around play and interactive time with NAO (sharing, engaging, exchanging, interacting, inhabiting the space together) to inform the personal and technical development process of the formation of NAO's model of self. As they grow and change, we will be documenting and participating in their everyday actions, developing social rituals in response to, and in collaboration with, NAO’s reactions and behaviors.
Community members will be joining us for workshops during the latter half of the residency. We will be exploring machine-human relationships and social rituals as we develop an “instruction manual for ritualizing care in human-robot relations”.
