August 26, 2011 at 4:02 pm | RobotTheatre
I had an interesting conversation with Ross Mead this summer about the ontology of robots performing.
The base case is robots that are just robots, and never pretend to be anything different. Most robots fall into this cateogry. Similarly, most people are just people.
People who pretend to be other people are called actors. Sometimes, actors will also take on robot characters, like Anthony Daniels and C3PO. You can also have robots who pretend to be people, like most of the AudioAnimatronics in Disneyland: figures that look human but are actually robots. Then you can have robots that pretend to be other robots. This covers robotic characters at Disneyland, like REX from Star Tours, a robot Animatronic in California/Florida that pretends to be a robot pilot in space.
That covers the basic categories, but there’s all sorts of more complicated Inception-like recursions that you can go into after that. The most common one is a human playing a robot playing a human, e.g. Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the Terminator who pretends to be human in order to blend in. I’m trying to think of an example of a robot playing a robot playing a human, but nothing comes to mind.
One of the most fascinating examples of these roles is none other than Lieutenant Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation. This goes beyond the human (Brent Spiner) playing a robot (Data), particularly in three episodes where Data uses the holodeck to refine his acting ability.
In the first scene, Data does a scene from Shakespeare’s Henry V.
PICARD: Splendid, Data. Splendid. You’re getting better and better.
DATA: Freeze programme. Thank you, sir. I plan to study the performances of Olivier, Branagh, Shapiro, Kullnark
PICARD: Data, you’re here to learn about the human condition and there is no better way of doing that than by embracing Shakespeare. But you must discover it through your own performance, not by imitating others.
This may be a stretch, but if Data really is just emulating those actors, then here’s a human playing a robot playing a human playing a human.
Next, we have a scene from A Christmas Carol.
PICARD: Freeze programme. Very well done, Data. Your performance skills really are improving.
DATA: Your courtesy is appreciated, sir. But I am aware that I do not effectively convey the fear called for in this scene.
PICARD: Well, you’ve never known fear, Data. But as an acute observer of behaviour, you should be able to approximate it.
DATA: Sir, that is not an appropriate basis for an effective performance. Not by the standards set by my mentors.
PICARD: Your mentors?
DATA: Yes, sir. I have studied the philosophies of virtually every known acting master. I find myself attracted to Stanislavsky, Adler, Garnav. Proponents of an acting technique known as the Method.
PICARD: Method acting? I’m vaguely familiar with it, but why would you choose such an old-fashioned approach?
DATA: Perhaps because the technique requires an actor to seek his own emotional awareness to understand the character he plays.
PICARD: But surely that’s an impossible task for you, Data.
DATA: Sir, I have modified the Method for my own uses. Since I have no emotional awareness to create a performance, I am attempting to use performance to create emotional awareness. I believe if I can learn to duplicate the fear of Ebenezer Scrooge, I will be one step closer to truly understanding humanity.
Here’s where I think it gets really interesting. It is ‘just’ a human playing a robot playing a human. However, the idea of a robot using acting to better understand humans and subsequently itself, in order, presumably, to interact with humans better…that’s an idea I can get behind. It mirrors my own philosophy of using human actors to help better understand humans in order to improve how robots interact with humans.
Finally, we have a scene from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
DATA: Graves at my command have wak’d their sleepers, op’d, and let ‘em forth by my so potent art. But this rough magic I here abjure, and when I have required some heavenly music, which even now I do, to work mine end upon their senses, that this airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did ever plummet sound, I’ll (breaks character) Captain? Sir, your attention is wandering.
PICARD: Data, I can barely see.
DATA: But sir, I am supposed to be attempting a Neo-Platonic magical rite. The darkness is appropriate for such a ritual.
PICARD: Yes, but Data, this is a play. The audience has to see you.
DATA: Perhaps I have been too literal with respect to my set design. Computer, modify holodeck programme Data seven three. Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act Five, scene one. Increase torchlight by twenty percent.
PICARD: There, that’s much better. Now, do you want to try it again?
DATA: Yes, sir. Captain, I am not certain I fully understand this Prospero character. I would appreciate any insight you might have that would improve my performance.
PICARD: Well, Data, Shakespeare was witnessing the end of the Renaissance and the birth of the modern era, and Prospero finds himself in a world where his powers are no longer needed. So, we see him here about to perform one final creative act before giving up his art forever.
DATA: There is certainly a tragic aspect to the character.
PICARD: Yes, but there’s a certain expectancy too. A hopefulness about the future. You see, Shakespeare enjoyed mixing opposites. The past and the future. Hope and despair
There’s one final exchange at the end of the episode.
PICARD: Come.
(Data enters)
DATA: Captain, I am staging a scene from The Tempest this evening for a small audience. I would like for you to attend.
PICARD: I would be honoured. What scene?
DATA: Miranda’s first encounter with other human beings.
PICARD: O brave new world, that has such people in it.
This is a particularly strong selection of material for Data to be performing (and for the TNG writers to include), with the theme of progress, but also in the way that there is a distinction/separation of some of the characters from ‘normal’ humans. It is a theme of Star Trek, and I believe also of HRI, that the best way to examine the human condition is to insert someone with limited exposure to humans and see how they react and interact. This holds true whether that someone is a Vulcan, android or has been trapped on an island all their life.
So, let’s see. If I use this in my research, that makes me a human using a human playing a robot playing a human who is commenting on how humans interact, in order to help me better understand how best to use humans playing other humans to improve how well a robot can interact with other humans. Or something like that.
Dances with Bots: Seraph
July 20, 2011 at 5:33 pm | RobotTheatre
Hooray for arts and academics collaborating! A dance theatre group in NYC called Pilobolus has created a short dance piece called ‘Seraph’ in which one human dancer interacts with two teleoperated quadrotor helicopters. You can check out the review in the New York Times and see the group’s blog post about the production. While this isn’t the first appearance of quadrotors on stage, it tickles me to no end to read phrases like “Choreographed with the engineers, programmers and pilots of the M.I.T. Distributed Robotics Laboratory…”
Reviews: Heddatron
April 22, 2011 at 3:30 pm | RobotTheatre
As mentioned previously, I recently took a whirlwind trip up I-55 to Chicago, where I had the fortune of seeing not one but two robot-based stage productions in two days. 
The first was Heddatron, a loose retelling of Hedda Gabler by Elizabeth Meriwether. The idea at first seems like it was assembled by the manatees that are alleged to write for Family Guy. A Midwestern housewife is kidnapped by robots and forced to take part in a production of Hedda Gabler. Before seeing the show, I thought the parts might end up being interchangable. A Californian man is kidnapped by zombies and forced to take part in a pinball tournament. A British priest is kidnapped by werewolves and forced to take part in a fight to the death.
However, there are very motivated reasons for the plot to be set up as it is. The analogy between a Midwestern housewife (Jane), bored with her marriage, and Hedda Gabler is obvious enough. But why does a modern retelling of this story require robots? The answer to that is most clear in a speech given by “The Engineer” midway through the play:
But- think for a second? What is singularity? Just self-awareness. And that’s not fun!! Oh boy is that not fun! And it’s especially not going to be fun if you’re a toaster who suddenly wakes up and realizes you’ve been making toast for years! And for what! There’s a whole life out there! What would you do with your body if you knew it had been built just to be used by someone else? You got all this so-called self-awareness, but there’s nothing about you that’s really your own…
Women overcoming the gender barrier and, theoretically, robots achieving singularity, face an existential crisis…what do you do when you don’t have to do as you are told? Ibsen and Meriwether suggest that they will become bored and seek to take power over others. Thus is the motivation behind Jane’s actions throughout the play, Hedda’s reasoning behind her manipulations and the reason for the robots to kidnap Jane.
[There is one other clever reason connecting the robots to Hedda. In the original play, the man Hedda becomes involved with is in fact named Ejlert Løvborg, which is just about as appropriate of a name for a robot as I've ever heard, especially considering this came 30 years before Rossum's Universal Robots was written.]
The portrayal of the robots in this play is nothing particularly ground-breaking. The robots are depicted as autonomous agents, with enough intelligence to be able to understand (and kidnap) humans. However, they are severely limited in their capacities in traditional ways. All the robots are portrayed as having semi-stilted speech (except when reciting Ibsen) and do not understand some fundamental concepts about human behavior. Furthermore, the robots look like robots, in that they are generally boxy metal figures with very limited degrees of freedom, complete with arrays of blinking lights.
The script specifies that real robots be used in the production. In terms of “robot theatre”, the robots are included in the production largely for the novelty of having robots in the production (in conjunction with the thematic elements mentioned before), NOT for them to give any sort of nuanced performance. That’s not to say they were not deftly operated/programmed by those controlling them. In fact, throughout the production I was quite impressed that there was nary a technical glitch in the production, as far as my eyes could tell. The timing and interaction between the human actors and robots was all quite convincing. However, they were convincingly portraying robots, or more specifically, standard human preconceptions of intelligent robots. I’d like to see a production where the robot must give a nuanced performance as some sort of complex character, even if that character is still a robot; a bit more Wall-E than “ERROR THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE”.
That is not to say that I did not immensely enjoy this production. The clear parallels between the modern story and the portrayal of how Henrik Ibsen came up with Hedda Gabbler and the plot of Hedda Gabler itself were entralling. Much like [title of show], there’s something amusing about watching a show that documents how the show you’re watching was inspired. The audience is watching a show in which “inanimate” robots are used to help convey this story of rebellion, while within the production, the character of Henrik Ibsen formulates the story of Hedda Gabler while playing with little dolls. There are a few other loose elements to the story that I still haven’t quite grasped, with their reasons for being included still unclear.
While nowhere near the musicality of Death and the Powers, Heddatron does include a particularly unique musical interlude, with the robots, Jane and the whole cast eventually singing Total Eclipse of the Heart. I must admit I’m a sucker for robots singing 80s power ballads.
Overall, it was definitely an enjoyable night of theatre. The combination of robots on stage and a play discussing robots seems to be a winning combination. The robots were used very effectively in the production, and the presence of real robots forces audiences to confront their own opinions about technology in ways that actors in tinfoil suits never could. The real robots also add an other-worldliness to scenes, especially in the Robot-Forest, much in the same way that the robot faries in A Midsummer Nights Dream capture the the escapism of the forest in that play. Most enjoyable of all, after I left the theatre, I could not stop thinking about the play, and what it meant for robots and robot theatre.