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.

• The World/Universe: LaternBot is consumed with desire, and enraged cause it can’t possess something.

• Other Characters: Torch the lamp is pursued to join LanternBot, but is unwilling but eventually concedes. Lantern does not know why it wants Torch, but mindlessly pursues it as if invaluable. Background illumination cycles through steady loops of color, symbolizing objective and status que.
• The Environment: Lantern mimics actively cycled background colors to blend in and illuminate as is his purpose and operation.
• The Audience:  LanternBot is a relatable character, who brings about his own demise.

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:

• Prime language will assume the actuations of LIGHT and GESTURE, maybe simplistic SOUNDs (BLIPs and BEEPs) too.

• Symbolic gesture and  accompanied LED color.

• Performance beings with normalcy. Background illumination play a huge role in tempo and regularity. Transition between beats showcased by fading of background to black (Day vs Night) (deliberate cues)

• Machines: Three individually programmed machines. (Lantern, Torch, and Background illumination)

• Lantern: 3DOF RRR (Roll-Pitch-Pitch Arm), all Pneumatically driven, Range: 120-120-90. 5ft tall. Links covered in Lantern material, illuminated with RGB LED strips. Can be on rollers where arm pushes its with end-effector or statically mounted. Lightweight as possible.

• Torch: A suspended lantern on a long fishing pole like rod. 2DOF Lantern roll and rod pitch at base. Rod pitch move lantern a dynamic range across set (2-3 meter), pneumatically drive. Lantern roll servo driven to show face and direction.

• Background: Simple Multicolored LED Strips against a wall of diffusive material. Encompasses three sides, very vibrant and illuminates a large area.

• No Major props beside actors

Evaluation:

• Can the piece convey the message of “desire vs possession” to the audience.  
• Does the audience relate the the LanternBot?
• Is the Audience Entertained?

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.

• Artistic objective: I want to tell the story of two small, simpler robots who represent shoes that are separated. As they search for each other, they try to match each other’s rhythm or performance in order to recognize each other. Gradually as the performance progresses, they will begin to sync up naturally as though they were one performer dancing in the pair of shoes that they formed. The story ends on a triumphant note, like a dancer striking a final pose. This narrative highlights the difficulty in communication between very different entities, as well as the triumph and happiness of having a moment of understanding.
• Performance objective: Having the robots hop to conflicting rhythms or articulation in a song and move in zigzag patterns around each other would show the confusion that they experience as they try to find each other. Eventually the robots will mimic a dancer’s movements as though one person were controlling both of them.
• Technical objective: The goal here would be to initially have two autonomous performing robots that would eventually act as one performer dancing in a pair of shoes. This may require a team of 3 people to control the robots–2 at the beginning, and 1 when the robots join. However, it would be more convenient to have the two separate robots respond to different stimuli in music so they would be able to develop their own movement patterns autonomously.

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

1. How many people pay attention to the performance by focusing on one robot at the beginning? How about when the robots come together?
2. Does the audience see the robots more as characters than robots?
3. Are the shoes’ movements natural, as though a human were dancing in them?
4. Do the robots move gracefully to a believable rhythm?
5. Does the show start and end on time?
6. Do the robots move without pausing for too long?
7. How many times did the robots pause unnecessarily?
8. How often did the audience clap for the robots as though they were real performers?
9. Do the robots stay onstage?

Zach

Intention

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.

Proposal

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.

Measures

The piece is successful if:

1. The audience does not know they are being measured
2. The robot’s behaviors are actively affected live by the audience’s behaviors
3. There is an actual possibility of success or failure
4. The audience finds itself emotionally relating to the action on stage, and rooting for the robot.

Time

1. Tempo
2. Duration
3. Kinesthetic Response
4. Repetition

Space

1. Shape
2. Gesture
3. Architecture
4. Spatial Relationship
5. Topography

Comments

1. At its heart it is a synthetic system, not an analytic one. The strength lies in its heuristics and exercises as a means for generation.
2. The viewpoints may seem kind of obvious. This is a feature, not a bug. It’s meant to be a naming of familiar ideas, not an abstracted theory. It is surprisingly easy to neglect the basics; all art training constantly reinforces fundamentals.
3. This is a sourcebook; for the most part we have to infer the philosophy. One deeply recurring theme: listen to each other. Other themes are very similar to Tai Chi and dance training.  However, let’s remain aware of the limits of our knowledge: we can’t deeply understand this unless we were to spent a lot of time practicing it.
4. Some exercises create a general state of mind and some stimulate a particular kind of creative direction. Themes for the state of mind:
   1. physical relaxation and presence
   2. group awareness
   3. unspoken consensus building
   4. subsuming individuality to the group
   5. building communication
5. Robots don’t have emotional state. A focus on practical, visible, external movement is a productive approach. A related theme: actors don’t ‘act emotions’, they perform actions which reveal emotion.
6. In the spirit of practical training, I think one central question is to ask how we can translate the exercises into robotic puppetry and automation?

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:

1. Are each of the emotional states distinct within a 70% confidence.
2. Does the audience perceive a relatable character or personality from these behaviors.
3. Is there a sense of emotion empathy towards the robot?

The technical measures and milestones:

1. Do the behavioral modes distinctly switch reliably?
2. Is the system performing on time?
3. Does the audience sigh, smile, or empathize with the simulated emotions?

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:

• Can a robot express and evoke emotions without looking like it is imitating a human?
• How can a robot use the mechanical sounds of its own movements to convey different reactions to some event?
• Since a robot can perform specific, precise actions, how can it use subtle changes to convey small differences in meaning?
• Robots can continuously repeat actions exactly without worrying about fatigue or stress, so how could you take advantage of this capability for repetitive motion to create patterns, especially in a crowd?
• How can changing the shape of the robot affect how people view it? What forms should it be able to go between?

As a general question:

• How do you shape the image of a robot as a performer or actor in its own right (rather than a fixture of the stage/set) without it simply being a robot replacing a human actor? (or even a series of robots replacing a series of human actors)

Creative Constraints:

• Make sure robots are interacting with each other or somehow creating the illusion that they are working together.
• Robots cannot adjust for unexpected errors or change of plans unless they are foreseen and the robots are programmed for it.
• Try to keep the robots from making expressions the way humans do. Look more at animals and how they interact with the world (and express discomfort, pleasure, etc.)

Limitation of Scope:

• Keep the focus on the robot’s movements and sounds, allowing lighting, set design, music, etc. to be kept separate from the robot (without direct controls or reactions from the robot.)
• Keep the robot design fairly simple to experiment with multiple versions/patterns of robot interactions.

Measures of Success:

• Do the audiences feel moved somehow by the piece? Or do they feel that it is a more robotic/less natural version of a human performance?
• Do audiences feel that the robot can perform or does it read like a machine at work being framed as an art piece?
• Can audiences read the differences in the precise motions and pattern shifts in the robots or do they read too subtly? (Much like natural variance in an actor’s performances at different times.)
• How well do audiences read the emotions exhibited by the robots?

Central Question(s)

• Can an autonomous performer utilize a simple feedback loop with an audience or other stage performer to enhance a performance, and what would that look like?
• What are the sorts of performative decisions that can be ‘offloaded’ in a repeatable way?
• How might a ‘robot’ be perceived as an actor, dancer, storyteller, or other type of entertainer? Where in this space of ‘performance’ might ‘robot’s’ or autonomous creations fall, and how might feedback loops with audience’s affect this?
• How much of an autonomous performance can go ‘off-script’ or be spontaneously improvised/adapted/generated by the autonomous performer while retaining the audience’s sense of engagement?
• Within a scripted piece, would even an insignificant adaptation or response from audience feedback help sell an illusion of sorts of a much more sophisticated level of entertainment.

(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.

Creative Constraints

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.

Scope

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.

Measures of Success

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

Central Questions

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.

Creative Constraints

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.

Limitation of Scope

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.

Measures of Success

The primary measures are qualitative:

1. Does the audience opinion reflect an understanding of the dramatic intent?
2. Does the audience perceive a potential for variation or failure in the machine performance?
3. Does the audience believe a satisfying climax and conclusion was reached?

Technical measures and milestones:

1. Does the fully-automatic mode produce a visible performance?
2. Did the show proceed on time from beginning to end?
3. How many unexpected deviations from the script occurred?
4. How many times did the audience laugh?
5. How many times did the audience gasp or titter?