Human-Robot Experience (HRX) Theatre Workshop
OzCHI 2024, Brisbane
Saturday, 30 November, 2024
9:00 AM – 4:15 PM
Pre-workshop Activity
Exploring More-Than-Human Relationships
In the context of this workshop, "more-than-human" refers to an expanded understanding of how we are deeply embedded and entangled with this world, including non-human artefacts, entities or phenomena. With regards to our HRX practice, the "more-than-human" stance challenges hierarchical anthropocentric views to, instead, design with how subjects and objects are mutually constituted in the dynamics of encounter (Gemeinboeck, 2021). Understanding our encounters with robots as more-than-human relationships thus opens up a more enactive and distributed notion of sociality and meaning-making, beyond the human.
To reflect on the social potential of more-than-human relationships prior to the workshop, participants are invited to engage in one (or both) of the following pre-workshop activities. They aim to prompt reflection on our entanglement with nonhuman entities/artefacts and the new meanings that can emerge from these more-than-human interactions. We will share and discuss your creative contributions after our lunch break (see schedule).
- Capture and share an existing more-than-human relationship you have with a pet, plant, or an artifact/machine/instrument in your everyday life or practice through sketches, annotated photos, or a short video (30 seconds). You are welcome to interpret this activity prompt as you are inspired to do so. The following questions are intended as provocations rather than prescriptions: Consider your bodily relations with your pet, plant, or device/machine etc. Are you aware of how your body feels during this interaction? Does it affect your movements? Do you feel you extend each other? Are there moments where the boundary between you and the other seems to become porous? Is this a social relationship? If so, in what way?
- Imagine a speculative social scenario with an abstract (non-anthropomorphic and non-zoomorphic) robot. Create and share a depiction of a more-than-human relationship with an artifact, machine, or robot. The imagined scenario should depict a social situation or relationship in the widest sense; it could suggest a novel notion of sociality and/or expand or subvert existing social relationships. Consider (any of) the following prompts: How does this sociality arise and/or express itself? Given this robot is not humanlike, how do you communicate with each other? Does it involve movement? How might this interaction challenge or redefine our understanding of 'social' relationships? In what ways does this robot relate to its environment and other entities around it? How does body language, proximity, and the environmental context affect the relationship? Finally, is this a horizontal relationship?
Depict this scenario through a sketch, drawing, digital illustration, or an AI-generated image or short video (using tools like DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Runway, etc.). If you use AI tools, please also include the prompt and also interesting examples of unexpected prompt interpretations
Submission Guidelines: Please submit your pre-workshop contributions together with your expression-of-interest by 31 October, 2024 (AoE).
- For images or sketches: Please submit in JPG or PNG format, max 10MB.
- For videos: Submit in MP4 format, max 30 seconds and 30MB.
- Include a title and/or a short text (max 200 words) with your submission.
We look forward to exploring these more-than-human relationships together in our workshop!
