robot fictions: entertainment cultures and engineering research entanglements
DESCRIPTION
Talk given at the "secret robothouse", Hatfield, Lonndon on June 15.TRANSCRIPT
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NICOLAS NOVA, 15.06.2011, HATFIELD
LIREC
ROBOT FICTIONS: ENTERTAINMENT CULTURES AND ENGINEERING RESEARCH ENTANGLEMENTS
WWW.LIFTLAB.COM
I ROBOTA: A FICTION FROM THE OUTSET
Rossum’s Universal Robots (Karel Kapek, 1920)
242
I 243
THE EVOLUTION OF SCI-FI THEMES (STEPHANIE FOX)
I ROBOT ARCHETYPES 244
“Robots are popular culture. There
isn’t any “knock-off” possible
there; it’s been knock-off from the
get-go. It’s like worrying about
somebody “knocking-off” cowboy
movies.”
Bruce Sterling
ROBOT FICTION INFLUENCE(D) THEIR DESIGN 245I
I CULTURAL ELEMENTS CIRCULATION (ZIMMERMANN, 2010) 246
I ASSUMPTIONS EMBEDDED INTO OBJECTS (AKRICH, 1992) 247
these assumptions influence
robot design (consciously or not)
II ROBOT IDIOMS 248
robot, droid, android, bot, bioroid,
cyborg...
Asimo (Asimov), irobot (Asimov’
book), GOLEM (jewish fictional
character), Hadaly (Villiers de l’Isle
d’Dam’s fictional android), ELIZA
(after Bernard Shaw’s theatre play)
-> influence on what robots do/are
II RECURRING TROPE 1: THE SHAPE(S) OF ROBOTS 249
robot-objects
bio-mimetic robots
pool-cleaner
automatic car
android
robotic arm
lawn-mower
zoomorphic robot
4-legged (dog)
2-legged (duck)
No legs (snake, fish)
vacuum-cleaner
“the android is a solution
waiting for a problem”
Mark Meadows
2410
RECURRING TROPE 1: THE SHAPE(S) OF ROBOTSII
2411II RECURRING TROPE 1: THE SHAPE(S) OF ROBOTS
Study conducted at Swiss Institute of Technology, Lausanne (2008)
about people’s feeling towards robots
II WHAT THE ROBOT IDEA TAUGHT US... 2412
robots in scifi introduced the
idea that objects can have
“personality”, a behavior
II SHOULD ROBOTS BE MIMETIC? 2413
“it becomes real by behaving
real, by demonstrating the
behavior of things that are real”
Kevin Slavin
II RECURRING TROPE 2: ROBOT BEHAVIOR (ASIMOV) 2414
II 2415
RECURRING TROPE 2: ROBOT BEHAVIOR
II 2416
RECURRING TROPE 2: ROBOT BEHAVIOR
II IS LAW 2 APPLICABLE? (KAPLAN, 2001) 2417
how to define a “human”?
how to define “harm”?
II RECURRING TROPE 4: AUTOMATION 2418
ambivalence: control
versus automation
III BUT SCI-FI IS NOT JUST A GADGET CATALOGUE... 2419
“Implications not just applications” Antony Dunne
"A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the
automobile but the traffic jam" Frederik Pohl
III ... SCI-FI AND PROBLEMS... 2420
“The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.(...)
payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted
a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
(...)
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless
steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew
the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door. “I’ll
sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.Joe Chip
said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can
live through it.”
Philip K. Dick: Ubik
III TODAY’S PROBLEM 2421
‘The fact that the robot couldn't
tell if it was a good time to
interrupt was a big problem for the
nursing staff: "I called it nasty
names and told it, 'Would you shut
the hell up? Can't you see I'm on
the phone? If you say "TUG has
arrived" one more time I'm going to
kick you in your camera.' "Some
staff members actually did lash
out and kick TUG in frustration’
New Scientist, 2010: http://cli.gs/
T7VH6e
IV CO-CONSTRUCTION
“Human Computer Interaction in Science Fiction Movies” by Schmitz,
Endres & Butzi (2008)
2422
films cite existing technology
technology inspire films
films inspire new technology
filmmakers and technologistsdeveloped shared new visions
NICOLAS NOVA
www.liftlab.com
THANK YOU MERCI GRACIAS DANKE GRAZIE
Slide 5: Dreaming of Robots: An
Interview with Bruce Sterling, acm
interactions, march-april 2005.
Slide 6: Zimmermann, B. (2010).
Redesigning Culture: Chinese Characters
in Alphabet-Encoded Networks”, Design
and Culture, 2-1, 27-43.
Slide 7: Akrich, M. (1992), "The
description of technical objects", in
Bijker, W.E., Law, J. (Eds),Shaping
Technology/Building Society, MIT Press.
Slide 10: Meadows, M. (2010). We,
Robot. The Lyons Press
Slide 11: Ray, C., Mondada, F. &
Siegwart, R. (2008). What do people
expect from robots? IEEE International
Conference on Intelligent Robots and
Systems, pp. 3816-3821.
Article references
REFERENCES 2424
Slide 13: Slavin, K. (2011). Reality Is
Plenty, Thanks. MoMo Amsterdam,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=o03wWtWASW4
Slide 15: Weld, D. & Etzioni, O. (1994).
The first law of robotics (a call to arms),
Proceeding AAAI'94 Proceedings of the
twelfth national conference on Artificial
intelligence (vol. 2).
Slide 16: Murphy, R.R. and Woods, D.
(2009). Beyond Asimov: The Three Laws
of Responsible Robotics IEEE Intelligent
Systems, pp. 14–20
Slide 17: Kaplan, F. (2001). Un robot
peut-il être notre ami ?. In Orlarey, Y.,
editor, L'Art, la pensée, les émotions,
pages 99-106.
Slide 22: Schmitz, M., Endres, C. & Butz,
A. (2008). A survey of human-computer
interaction design in science fiction
movies, Proceeding of INTETAIN '08
Proceedings of the 2nd international
conference on INtelligent TEchnologies
for interactive enterTAINment