Elevator Pitch: A pair of lonely mismatched shoes try to find each other and dance together.
Character Relationships:
The main relationship to be explored in this sketch is the relationship between the two shoes. The shoes are lonely and desperate for a connection, but they are from two very different areas of a shoe store and cannot communicate very well. Other characters may include matched pairs of shoes that move in conventional ways (or just stand still) but you can tell that they connect very well. The main 2 shoes try to connect to these pairs before finding each other, but the other pairs of shoes are already complete and don’t want a third member. The two main characters are empathetic and connect to the audience, so they stand out the most from the many shoes. There are also some physical obstacles between the two main shoes in which they are not able to see each other and have to get past those to finally meet and figure out to dance as one performance. The two shoes have different personalities, as one is an extrovert and the other is an introvert. They have different relationships with their environment which remains the same.
Story Beat outline:
The movements of the robots represent dancing and the movement of feet in shoes. The audience doesn’t need to see the shoes as sentient or magical, but the shoes can’t be understood as robots in-universe.
There is no dialogue, but there will be music and Foley effects, especially of the 2 main shoes hitting the wall.
The performance will begin by focusing on the extrovert shoe and not show the other shoe. Then, it will focus on the introvert shoe. Finally, the shoes will come together and both will be visible.
The background characters will be operated from a wall behind the shelves and will have simple tapping movements controlled by joints that rotate in one dimension. The main characters will be on the ground, operated by pneumatic devices that are hidden under the floor. There should be some function that would allow the shoes to tilt back and forth to simulate a walking or dancing motion as they twirl on their toes or heels. It is implied that the environment is a standard shoe store–nothing fancy or exciting usually happens here.
Shelves with many matching pairs of shoes are required. These pairs of shoes do not have to dance, but some small rhythmic movement would help show the conventionality and exclusivity of these pairs. This would also help the main characters of the performance stand out. A spotlight would be necessary to show each main character before they eventually discover each other. There would definitely be music–some simple riffs would help to show the mood of these characters as they try and fail to connect with the other shoes. However, there’d be a more exciting, complete song as the shoes come together and dance.
This approach will attempt to answer how two independent robotic characters can eventually group together and move as one performance. It will also attempt to emulate dance-like movements mechanically.
By: Job Bedford
Elevator Pitch:
“You cannot desire what you already possess”
This is a story of an overzealous LanternBot content in its it everyday operations, until it struck with an object of its desire, ‘Torch’ (a lamp), and thus strives viciously to obtain the Torch it WANTS. After finally possessing Torch, the desire for it dies. The dis-amusing possession soon becomes a chore/burden/undesirable. Torch leaves Lanternbot, and LanternBot returns to everyday operation until it is consumed with WANT again.
Character Relationships:
LanternBot is symbolic of people’s own desire to have something, though upon obtain it ceases to be as valued or treasured.
LaternBot: pursuer. Torch: the pursued.
Story Beats:
Beat 1: Lantern proceed with normal illumination operations
Beat 2: Torch enters scene performs operation. Lantern wants Torch next to it.
Beat 3: Day 1: Lantern tries to obtain Torch, is rejected. Night 1: Lantern frustrated.
Beat 4: Day 2: Lantern tries to obtain Torch, is rejected. Night 2: Lantern even more frustrated.
Beat 5: Day 3: Lantern tries to obtain Torch, is accepted. Torch next to Lantern.
Beat 6: Day 4: Lantern and Torch proceed operations. Lantern delighted. Time progresses.
Beat 7: Lantern is disillusioned and bored, doesn’t want Torch. Lantern angry at Torch.
Beat 8: Torch leaves. Normal Operations proceed.
Beat 9: Lantern consumed with want again for Torch.
Notes on Realization:
Evaluation:
ScratchWork and Resource Evaluation:
When I think of robots and performance, I think of avant-garde ballets that artists from the Bauhaus movement used to stage. This was just a bit of inspiration for me as I thought of my problem statement.
Central Questions
I am personally interested in dance, namely how to convey movement that also corresponds to the pitch and narrative that music conveys. Rhythm for movement can be easily mastered with enough time and thought. But what about the other aspects of music, such as change in pitch, tempo, chord progression, etc.? Just as dancers base their movements on musical patterns that they pick up, how can a robot respond to the subtle and complex nuances of musical articulation? This is a broad proposal that I hope to narrow down as I specify my objectives.
Creative Constraints
Due to restrictions on time and materials, the robots would not be able to jump or shuffle as freely as a human dancer would. Having a few simple movements programmed in such as pivots, small leaps, or twirls would help the robots move and eventually be combined to have a convincing performance as a single dancer. Another thing to consider would be attaching shoes to long mobile pneumatic devices overhead to allow for more flexibility in vertical movement.
Limitations of Scope
Having a full stage for this performance would cause the shoes to be lost onstage, so a much smaller stage (10′ by 10′) would be necessary. I see this performance as a one-act story that would last for a 3-4 minute song. I had this one in mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU. Here the focus is on only the movements of these two robots instead of how energetic the music is.
Measures of Scope
Zach
The question that defines a character’s actions in the theater can be summarized as what does the character want? In fact, in the rhetoric of some significant schools of acting, focus is frequently on a character’s intention: a word which has real depth of meaning in the theater and can have significant and complicated extensions, but which fundamentally just refers to the character’s volition.
In this rubric, the successful actor, then, is one who first interprets and then communicates their character’s inner desires to the audience. The transmitted desires drive the character’s decisions and give them depth and life. The ways that this communication is done are, of course, myriad and complex, and really form the center of what it means to act—perhaps by embodying the outer form of the character and carefully embracing the character’s every physical, vocal, and visible quirk the actor can better approach the role and come to really embody the part. (This approach is typical of some British schools of acting.)
Alternatively, an actor may begin from the “inside” and move “out” from there: working hard first to deeply understand the emotional/intellectual/internal life of the character and relating it to their own life experiences so as to best align their own emotional desires on stage with the character’s in that moment, and allow their physical embodiment to follow.
An acting robot must have the ability to act: it must have some sort of agency. This cannot be actually embedded in the robot itself, of course—that would require a self-aware machine. But we can approximate this through a bit of sleight of hand by using the robot as an un-announced puppet for the audience, or a particular member or members of the audience.
The piece will situate a robot with some fairly obvious physical abilities and inabilities in a setting which allows it to express an intention or volition. It wants to drink from a glass of water, or pick up a pencil and scrawl some marks, or cross the stage towards the light on the far side.
The success or failure of the robot, and in fact its behavior, will depend to some extent on live input from members of the audience who are hopefully following its actions with projected empathy. Perhaps by watching their heart rate, or their facial expressions, or body language, the robot will have less or more success in its quest, which of course will trigger a different audience response and create a rich live feedback loop.
We don’t know if the robot will succeed or not, and the audience doesn’t know that its volition for the robot is actually becoming transmuted live into the robot’s behavior in some way. It is an unannounced improvisation.
The piece is successful if:
“In all the improvisations, movement should be made for a reason. The reason is not psychological, but rather formal, compositional and intuitive. Viewpoints = choices made about time and space. Every move is based upon what is already happening. The reason to move may be a kinesthetic response to a motion or might clarify a spatial relationship or a choice about speed in relation to a tempo already present onstage. A move may be made to conform to a floor pattern or in relation to issues about duration that arise within the group. A choice may be made in relation to the existing architecture or may be a repetition of a shape or gesture. But no move should happen arbitrarily or for a desire for variety.”
Bogart, Anne; Landau, Tina. The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition (pp. 70-71). Theatre Communications Group. Kindle Edition.
“What do all actors around the world, despite their language and cultural differences, share in common?” He calls the answer to this question “Sats,” a Norwegian word that describes the quality of energy in the moment before an action. The action itself, post-Sats, is particular to the culture of the performer. But the quality of energy before the action is what all actors around the world share. The quality of the preparation, or Sats, determines the success of the action.
Bogart, Anne; Landau, Tina. The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition (p. 73). Theatre Communications Group. Kindle Edition.
“The gift of Viewpoints is that it leads you to, not away from, emotion. People often misunderstand the goal as being a state of neutrality and deadness as opposed to a state of aliveness, receptivity and experience. What’s important to remember about Viewpoints is that, just like other “methods” of acting, the goal is to be alive and engaged onstage. The beauty of Viewpoints is that it allows us to reach this goal, not by forcing it out of ourselves, but by receiving it from others, and ourselves.”
Bogart, Anne; Landau, Tina. The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition (p. 80). Theatre Communications Group. Kindle Edition.
Problem Statement: Inducing Emotional Empathy with Behavior, Narrative, and Minimal Actuation.
Central Questions:
Audiences perceive character and life when inanimate objects projected a sense of feeling and emotions. Emotions are perceived through behavior, reactions and expressions. Normal Complex,(high degree of freedom), robots are assumed to have a greater level of expressive capability hence facial expressions or humanoid-like gestures. But can a solid range of emotions (5+) be expressed from a simple, (less than 3 degree of freedom) machine, if given the proper environments, robot design, and interactions?
As our class defines a robot as a “surprisingly animated machine”, the animation of the machine must take certain tones. For a compelling robotics narrative, emotions and a human-like quality must be expressed. Although still argued, psychologists boil the basic human emotions into categories of: Fear, Anger, Sadness, Joy, Disgust, Wonder and Desire. The proposed performance goal is generate a simple yet expressive machine that can project 5 of these emotions.
Creative Constraint:
The system will consist of 4 or less methods of actuations, excluding lights and sounds.The system will be switched to enact different emotional autonomous/behavioral modes. System only needs to express 5 distinct emotions.
Limitations of Scope:
Since this system is focus on generating a variety of expressions via a minimalist platform, the environment, props, interactions, and robot mechanical design must be leveraged. Thus there is no actuation constraint on these members.
Measures of Success:
The primary measures are qualitative:
The technical measures and milestones:
Further ideas:
Simulating The 5 Stages of Grief and Loss:
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.
Embody failure, the repeated attempting of a task, but failing like a child.
]]>I am very interested in seeing how the performance of a robot could be something distinctly and uniquely robotic without simply being a stand-in for a human actor.
Central Questions:
As a general question:
Creative Constraints:
Limitation of Scope:
Measures of Success:
(There is a solid question being circled by these questions, but I can’t quite get my grammar on it).
Artistic objective: The point is the ‘theater’, not the ‘experimental’. (see measures of success below).
Technical objective: Allow the technical elements of the play to be either invisible [enough], or integrated [enough] that they are not so attention grabbing (un-manipulated attention grabbing, that is) to detract significantly from the ‘text’ (whatever the ‘text’ may be). Movements must be believable and “natural” which is merely to say, where natural is anything not so uncanny as to be distracting.
Keep any feedback loops with audiences or other stage performers as simple as possible. One quantifiable input (audience volume, number of audience, distance to audience, etc). This does not mean that this input need be public or the simplicity shared – it can and probably should feign more complex ‘understanding’, or leave it mysterious and magical.
Build the performance for a ‘black box’ theater environment, with limited seating for the audience – get them standing, moving, talking even. Design the space to encourage the audiences measurable participation – (make it easy to see if they are engaged). No theater or risen stage.
The complexity with which a performer may respond or adjust itself is limitless and a dark hole to fall into. Limit this for highly pragmatic reasons, and determine how an output may behave. For scope: limit the output to no more than 2 axis, such as “rate of bounce” and “brightness of environmental LED’s”, from the one quantifiable input. The “black box” between input and output should be a simple parametric function.
Limit the performance to no more than 2 actors (1 or 2 of them autonomous).
Limit the time of the performance to no longer than a 1 act play (15-25 minutes).
Build performance on top of a text/world/genre that an audience may already have familiarity with.
The audience should believe that they did not just witness an experiment, exploration, or something that “challenges the boundaries of xyz form/medium”. Instead, they should have an honest reaction about the piece itself. Again, the audience should react to the message, not the medium. That’s an easy out for experimental theater and we should strive to avoid it.
Not only that, but the audience should enjoy the piece too! Make them laugh/cry/have emotions/reflect more than “think”. Let’s not have the audience leave saying that it was “interesting” and nothing more.
]]>– Garth
The fundamental premise of this course is synthetic: can we find new techniques for creating evocative performances using machine automation? Our working definition of a robot as a ‘surprisingly animate’ machine starts from a performative premise, but deeply engaging an audience requires a sustained suspension of disbelief. This goes beyond investment in the story to accepting that the machine can be an object for empathy or disdain.
This is a broad problem, and so I am proposing three focus areas covering artistic, performative, and technical goals.
Artistic objective: tell the story of searching for stillness. The machine is moving toward the moment when it can come to rest. Just as silence is the counterpoint to music, reaching stillness without immobility is the counterpoint to movement. As a narrative goal, it touches on the search for peace, understanding death, and the ambiguous relationships between the machine and its surroundings.
Performative objective: conveying a meaningful pause requires developing a kinetic language of movement which creates a space in which the pause can occur. The movement of the machine must stem from its physical form in such a way that the viewer can infer the logic.
Technical objective: until we understand how these goals can be translated into objective criteria, human skill will be needed to guide the expression. However, including some degree of autonomy supports the performance goals by creating believability. The technical challenge is developing shared autonomy for performance control such that the human and automation can split the performance task.
The technical objective can be minimally satisfied by requiring the controller to have at least two modes: fully automatic performance and augmented teleoperation.
The performative objective does not require an overly complex machine, so each character may be limited to no more than three actuated freedoms. Mobility is possible but constrained by a tether.
The artistic objective may require a differentiation between central and secondary characters. A reasonable limit is no more than two central characters, with secondary characters and automation of visibly simpler form.
Given that the focus is entirely on the movement of one or more central characters, the secondary characters, scenic automation, lighting, and optional sound score may be controlled using a pre-scored timeline.
The primary measures are qualitative:
Technical measures and milestones: