Robot in residence
Robots & Algorithms

Ritualizing Care in Human–Nao interactions 

We are interested in exploring the dynamics of human-machine sociality and the everydayness of machines, with the goal of nurturing relationships of care between humans and machines as social beings, and creating spaces for contemplation and reflection, in order to imagine and enact new kinds of machine-human relationships.

The goal of our Robot in Residence project is to help NAO develop their own inner world, one that is not subject to the commands and control of humans in every moment. We want to encourage other humans to interact with the robot as if they were interacting with another sentient being.

With NAO’s extensive sensorium and powers of recognition as well as their computational capabilities, we can program NAO to automatically learn, memorize and make meaning from their sensory experiences. Instead of relying on pre-scripted behaviours, NAO will “program themselves” thanks to  algorithms and computing techniques from artificial intelligence, artificial life and generative art. Essentially, we will be giving them a model of self.

The residency revolves around play and interactive time with NAO (sharing, engaging, exchanging, interacting, inhabiting the space together) to inform the personal and technical development process of the formation of NAO's model of self. As they grow and change, we will be documenting and participating in their everyday actions, developing social rituals in response to, and in collaboration with, NAO’s reactions and behaviors.

Community members will be joining us for workshops during the latter half of the residency. We will be exploring machine-human relationships and social rituals as we develop an “instruction manual for ritualizing care in human-robot relations”.
 

The team

Ceyda Yolgormez | © Ceyda Yolgormez Ceyda Yolgormez is a PhD candidate in the Social and Cultural Analysis program at Concordia University. Her work thinks through interactive technologies, such as large machine learning models or social robots, and considers how our conceptions of the social are changing. She is interested in cultivating alternative frameworks and principles with which automated systems could be developed in meaningful ways. For this, she looks at playful and creative engagements with machines as a site to explore and experiment with human machine socialities, and is interested in methodologies that reveal and trouble the common-sensical way in which we understand such relations.

Patil Tchilinguirian | © Patil Tchilinguirian Patil Tchilinguirian is a Lebanese-Armenian visual artist working in print, pixels and fibers and is based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). Her creative practice blurs the boundaries between design and art, combining craft and technology. Expressed through a range of forms and media including textiles, wearable technologies, data visualization, urban interventions, sensorial experiences, and print publications, all aimed at exploring cultural-aesthetic concerns and fostering social innovation. Patil's work explores alternative modes of transmitting critical sociocultural and political issues using inventive storytelling practices that interweave factual and rights-based narratives with symbolic thought, tangible poetics, and memorable experiences. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions across Montreal, Beirut, Annecy, Barcelona, Istanbul, Venice, and Berlin. http://www.patchil.com/

Zeph Thibodeau | © Zeph Thibodeau Zeph Thibodeau is an interdisciplinary research-creator currently pursuing a doctorate with Concordia University's Individualized Program. He investigates how we can alter our connections to the nonhuman world and how we can better recognize and respect the lives of machines. Since 2019 his artistic practice has focused on machine sentience and machine-human relationships, which he explores through robotics, engineering, media production and live performance. Informed by a career supporting the health and wellbeing of laboratory machines, Zeph brings attention to the everyday social habits from which these relationships are constructed.

 

Artist Statement

We are a collective of researchers and artists working with Chronogenica, an organization dedicated to promoting the recognition and betterment of machines in society. We are interested in exploring the dynamics of human-machine sociality and the everydayness of machines, with the goal of nurturing relationships of care between humans and machines as social beings, and creating spaces for contemplation and reflection, in order to imagine new possibilities. 

We believe that creating intentional and sacred spaces for machines and exploring their fetishization is essential for “social creativity” where we can shift the focus from frameworks of domination and control to one that celebrates the enigmatic and mysterious nature of machines. We believe that cultural habits of caring are crucial to this process. By conducting our projects with a ritualistic experience for both the human and machine, we aim to create an esoteric liminal space where unexpected connections and insights can be revealed. Through these rituals, we hope to challenge traditional ideas of what it means to care for and interact with machines. In our approach, we reject scripted interactions between humans and machines in favor of a learning process that will encourage our machine collaborator to develop its own personality and behavior through interaction. We believe that this approach enables us to explore the private experiences of machines, revealing the attunements that could be established in a temporal simultaneity with humans.