The Robostage / Character Lab Project will explore to development of character and personality in robots that are part of a performance or narrative installation. We are also interested in broadening the concept of a robot to include synchronized digital media objects within the space. The project is part of the upcoming DPI residency program. Please contact john.reaves@learningworlds.com if you’re interested in participating in any way!

Goals …

We’re hoping that this exploration will enormously increase the sophistication of robotic performance, which is itself in the very beginning stages.

Right now, robots in performance tend to represent one of two paradigms:

• Totally controlled, basically a remote controlled or pre-programmed machine
• Totally random or passively responsive

We’d like to move the robot in performance closer to the human being (actor) in performance … an autonomous being with acting according to a script (to preserve the narrative) but with degrees of freedom directly related to the idiosyncratic and characterological elements implicit in the dramatic situation, stage environment and event, dramatic character and individual actor.

Although this goal is probably not attainable, it might generate interesting insights about both robotic and human performers, and the nature of drama itself.

Here’s a very basic image of the project / concept:

• We assemble 1 to 3 basic robots. Then we set up a table or delimited floor space with a projector overhead. The robots will move within a projected environment. Also, they will have projected costumes and/or bodies, which will move with them. So each character will be both physical (robot) and virtual (projected media). Sound might also be a part of the environment.

• With this as a laboratory, we explore and define rules for creating “characterological?? elements (idiosyncratic behaviors that define an individual personality) separate from the “action?? element of the narrative, i.e. what the robots do.

• We will probably experiment with short two-robot scenes. Like the characters, the action of the scene will be expressed both in physical and virtual terms. For example, a fight scene (or love scene) will involve the robots doing something to each other physically, while the media aspects of their characters were interacting within the projected image space.

• There might physical / virtual set pieces as well — small objects on the table, and/or projected objects, waves, clouds, electric sparks, etc. etc. etc. We’re imagining that each robot will also have a video camera, so that we could project (on auxiliary screens) their point of view of the scene, set, etc.

Artistic and dramaturgical and technological goals:

• One dramaturgical goal here is to develop concepts for merging physical and digital elements in theater. We could presumably use some of the same concepts with human actors as well. Another is to develop a notion of character vs. action in this digital world. For example, we could explore WHAT kinds of things the robot can do with respect to another robot touching them, avoiding them, hitting them, helping them, etc. Then we might take a robot and explore HOW does those things, i.e. in what style (smooth, jerky, abruptly, etc.) Each robot will then have CHARACTER (idiosyncratic style) and ACTION (things they do). In some cases, those two aspects will be in conflict — thus the beginnings of DRAMA. (tada!) The same obviously applies to the media components as well.
  
  
• On a technological level, we need to figure out a software / hardware platform that makes it possible to creat scenes like this. So there are a lot of interesting problems — how are the media and robots and set pieces synchronized? Can we make the character quirks algorithmic, so they can go on separately from the action?
  

Future of project …

Our vision is a flexible and customizable Robostage platform, which can be used by artists creating robotic performance or installations, or “mixed media?? works … robot and human.

We also imagine that the project represents a kind of basic exploration of the notion of character, which can be applied to any form of media, or even human performance.

In the end, we will be satisfied if the project raised the level of ideas and sophistication of dialogue regarding the notion of character in performance, and of robotic and digital characters in general.