Final Product – Simulation
Final Product – Real
PROJECT FILE:
PROJECT STATEMENT:
We set out to create a performance that told the story of the mentor-mentee dynamic. We wanted to use two robots for the performance, and have them act out a piano lesson between a student and teacher. We focused on the play-and-repeat form of a piano lesson. We wanted to show emotions, such as frustration of the tutor when the student plays the wrong key, or the hesitation of an unsure student. We also wanted to create simple robots, for the purpose of putting the emphasis on the performance, and not the technical abilities of the robots.
REFLECTION ON COURSE THEME:
The central focus of this project revolves around the question of “how do we perceive machines as characters?” and “What is the minimum requirement for a machine to be perceived as having personality?”. In the case of this project, both the piano tutor and student are deprived of any sort of anthropomorphization; they are faceless machines with limited capabilities, and thus any form of character must be derived from their actions and circumstance. In terms of this project specifically, it is the call-and-response dynamic between the two robots that determines their character. The Students response can be categorized as obedient or disobedient, and the Tutors responses can vary from angrily slamming on keys to calmly playing the next note.
The purpose of the project is not so much to tell a story so much as it is to showcase a relationship. As a passive viewer, the observer gets to watch a dynamic unfold, one that they themselves might be familiar with, and characterize each robot from their own personal experiences and recognition of common themes.
OUTCOMES:
The physical project itself has flaws in its performance, each robot does not always hit the key it is programmed to hit, and the calibration strays the longer the program is run. However, in the times that it performs actions correctly, the performance on a whole gives the audience some sense of the tutor-student dynamic. The choice to make the performance somewhat autonomous and randomized subtracts from the performance as a whole, as it makes the actions of both robots confusing if there is not a set pattern established and the viewers do not know what to expect from either performer. As a learning experience, while the idea and vision of the project was clear, actually creating the machine from scratch made many of the details hard to implement, and as a result, some of the artistic vision was lost. Overall, simplifying certain ideas and concepts was useful in getting the machine to run, but should have been better compensated for to restore the artistry of the piece.
Comments are closed.