Presentation of Self in Machine Life : A human-machine performance

The world has been driven apart by recent events, making long distance performative mingling difficult to achieve, especially those employing in-person collaboration between humans and machines. How shall we reclaim a tangible exchange with other parts of the world that has presence and meaning, as opposed to impersonal virtual interactions? We created and choreographed and an art technology performance that allows viewers in Oklahoma City to immerse themselves in a collaborative narrative space between a dancer in the US and a robot arm in City University of Hong Kong’s Studio for Narrative Spaces. The performance is shown in either online or offline form to audiences, who witness the narrative of a dancer and a robot who communicate with each other through movement, sometimes leading one another, sometimes frustrating each other, as if each are present to the other across a 12 hour divide. Without viewing the machine directly, the dancer relies on limited perspectives and sounds to enable bi-directional communication.