Human-Robot Experience (HRX) Theatre Workshop

OzCHI 2024, Brisbane
Saturday, 30 November, 2024
9:00 AM – 4:15 PM

We invite you to join us in reimagining our relationships with robots through the Human-Robot Experience (HRX) Theatre Workshop.

How to Participate

Overview

The HRX Theatre Workshop invites participants to explore the social potential of machinelike artifacts. We aim to establish a creative playground for developing and enacting inclusive human-robot scenarios, harnessing the generative potential of movement. Our approach introduces the Relational Body Mapping (RBM) method, using robot costumes to facilitate perspective-taking and enable participants to step into the shoes of a robot, experiencing its unique affordances.

This immersive approach cultivates diverse perspectives beyond anthropocentric views, opening up new modes of empathy, nonverbal communication, and meaning-making with machinelike artifacts. By weaving together creative robotics, choreography, and dance, grounded in new materialism, we seek to transcend binary frameworks in HRI and cultivate a posthuman experience.

Themes

The workshop explores key questions and strategies for reimagining human-robot relationships through embodied, movement-based approaches. We particularly encourage participation from researchers and practitioners interested in:

• Bringing together embodied practices and technology
• Expanding their toolkit with embodied, experiential approaches
• Novel methodologies for human-robot interaction design
• Integrating the relational potential of movement qualities into work with robots
• Exploring transdisciplinary perspectives on human-robot relationships

Expected Outcomes

The workshop will offer participants an embodied experience of how movement-based practices can inform and transform our understanding of human-robot interactions. Participants will:

• Engage in a transdisciplinary practice for prototyping human-robot scenarios using movement strategies
• Acquire tools to attune to more-than-human relationships
• Challenge conventional HRI approaches by experiencing alternative design paradigms
• Gain insights into the potential of movement as a generative element in HRI
• Develop new perspectives on agency and embodiment in robotic systems
• Explore transcorporeal empathy in the context of human-robot relationships

How to Participate

Please submit a brief expression-of-interest (max 200 words, including your background and motivation for attending the workshop) to pgemeinboeck@swin.edu.au by 31 October 2024. We look forward to seeing you at the workshop!

Workshop Organisers

Human-Robot Experience (HRX) Theatre Workshop is being organised by Petra Gemeinboeck, Rob Saunders, Steph Hutchison, and Kristina Mah. We are delighted to have Prof. Jonathan Roberts as our invited speaker.

Participant Information

Participants should be open to engaging in movement-based activities and scenario development. No prior dance or performance experience is required. There is no pressure to participate in any activity you are not comfortable with. Please bring comfortable clothing suitable for movement activities.

Optional Pre-workshop Activity: Exploring More-Than-Human Relationships

We invite you to participate in one of the following pre-workshop activities. These activities aim to prompt reflection on our entanglements with nonhuman entities and the new meanings that can emerge from these more-than-human interactions. See the pre-workshop activity page for more details.

Pre-workshop Activity

Workshop Schedule

Time	Activity
9:00 – 9:15 AM	Arrival
9:15 – 9:30 AM	Introduction: workshop goals and activities. Initial relational body map (15m)
9:30 – 9:45 AM	Human-Robot Experience (HRX): a brief introduction to our more-than-human practice looking at performance-making research as a prototyping method (15m)
9:45 – 10:30 AM	A conversation with Jonathan Roberts Professor Jonathan Roberts is the Director of the Australian Cobotics Centre, and Technical Director of the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Hub. In this conversation with Steph Hutchison, Jon will talk about their interdisciplinary collaboration, cobotic futures, and what robotics can gain from arts-led approaches and dance knowledge. (45m)
10:30 – 10:45 AM	Coffee break (15m)
10:45 – 11:20 AM	Movement explorations and kinaesthetic awareness: gentle contact improvisations for self-awareness and sensitivity and defamiliarizing habitual movements and exploring space through movement qualities (35m)
11:20 – 12:15 PM	Introducing the cube artefact (robot costume): exploring the artefact in relation to one’s body (angle, proximity, height); witnessing a dialogue with cube-in-motion; exploring movement dialogues with cubes; discussion (55m)
12:15 – 1:15 PM	Lunch break (60m)
1:15 – 1:40 PM	Discussion of engagement activity: sharing pre-workshop engagement submissions (25m)
1:40 – 2:40 PM	Collaborative scenario development: small teams craft and enact speculative social scenarios with cube artifacts; this may include sonic and image-based contexts (60m)
2:40 – 2:55 PM	Coffee break (15m)
2:55 – 3:35 PM	Scenario presentation: teams present, experience, and discuss their scenarios; how would these robots appear and relate to the world? (40m)
3:35 – 4:15 PM	Discussion and wrap-up: sharing experiences and insights, as well as challenges; second body map and reflecting on changes (40m)