Lecture-Demonstration Dance Videos Would be Invaluable and Fun
I would like to encourage choreographers and dancers to create lecture-demonstration style videos for the Internet. There are literally thousands of topics that dancers can present in engaging video format that feature brief spoken explanations and dance demonstrations.
For example, in The Kinetic Interface blog I write about body and movement-centric developments taking place in science, technology and other fields. Yesterday, I wrote "The Sources of Vertical Movement," in which I discussed Capuchin, a robot that scales walls and cliffs, and can be used for geological research on earth and other planets. Here is a video of Capuchin:
I think that a fascinating video would be one that features a choreographer who discusses what he or she has learned about vertical-climbing robots from a dancer's perspective. These insights would be interspersed with solo movements and snippets of choreography that spring from this exploration of robotic locomotion. Maybe the choreographer would start a video section by saying, "I'd like to see the robot try this type of propulsion," "What would happen if the rhythmic patterns were altered," "The leg movements of the robot remind me of a dance piece I created two years ago..." or "What would happen if the robot used a different approach to balancing itself." There are many ideas to explore at the intersection of dance and robotics. My main point is that there are many topics to delve into and that dancers can help visualize movements in a way that few others can.
One of the advantages of this interdisciplinary approach is that by definition this video will be of interest to the dance community and the technology community. And the posting of this video provides an excellent opportunity to foster a conversation amongst people with different interests and areas of expertise.
Posted by
Doug Fox on May 9, 2008 8:40 AM
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Hello Doug,
Thank you for this great compilation of material on research on robot motion.
I totally believe that robotics and an interdisciplinary perspective in motion studies (that you are conveying in you new blog) is very relevant.
For long time, I have been interested on robotics and its implication for the understanding on movement and the other way around: the importance of he knowhow of certain movement practitioners is very relevant for robotics.
As you know robotics is a very particular branch of AI or artificial intelligence and as such is part of the many disciplines that form what we call Cognitive Science.
I think that you are seeing something that is obvious, but not so obvious for dance practitioners.
Robotics scientists have to study movement and how movement is controlled and generated in biologicals systems. That is big step on the understanding of intelligence that includes motion as a cognitive process.
Motion as cognition is a recent development in cognitive science and its main implication is that how intelligence was conceived had to be reformulated. Conceiving intelligence as embodied, not language and representationally based helped to builds most of the robots that you have featured.
This robotics approach is called subsumption architecture and it implies the design with a bottom-up architecture (Rodney Brooks et all)
So, I think that robotics, and specially the new AI are very important for the understanding of movement and the emergent properties of being in the world with an embodied intelligence that is (biologically) designed bottom-up.
I just wanted to point out again that it is totally relevant and my experience had been that when I teach this connection I have to bring this awareness about notions of intelligence. Most of the time, when I talk to dances and choreographers about this connection with robotics and how exciting it is, most of the times, I encounter a very naive and romantic view about the body (and dance) that carries negative value against robotics as the most anti dance (against the natural body)
I believe that this research is crucial and is making us reformulate (for main stream science)what for dancers is obvious: we are interacting embodied minds and new robotics uses this approach to engineer "improvisational" robots that can self-organize behavior.
So, dance as we know it might be a relevant cognitive process with evolutionary importance and ther are many approaches in new dance that are already investigating this interface.
New Robotics is important for dance, but previously is important for its implication on the understanding of humanness and biological kinship.
There are and there have been an important cross-fertilization between performing arts and robotics (stelarc, Pablo Ventura,
Mareli Antunez Roca) just to name a few.
So, robots (thanks to Hollywood) and one of the most powerful images of control, de-humanization and are a very fertile field for artistic investigation but it is also the most important branch in cognitive science and with a direct implications for the dance science field.
New robotics, more than depicting/simulating movement is a way of conceiving systems that are bottom-up, decentralized, generative ( improvisational) and collaborative.
The implications are huge!
New York City,
10 May 2008
Much thanks for sharing your thoughts about robotics, AI and cognitive science, and their relationship to dance and movement.
And sorry for delay in posting your comment - I accidentally overlooked it.
This is definitely an area that I'll continue to explore and cover in my blog.
If others in the dance and cognitive science fields are exploring this intersection (dance and robotics - and related topics), I'd be delighted to hear about them.
The Kinetic Interface blog on Great Dance starts with the premise that by focusing on the body and movement we can better understand, engage with, and contribute to many of the technological and scientific changes that are reshaping our daily lives.
To share stories and ideas, offer feedback, and ask questions, please email Doug Fox.
2 Comments
Hello Doug,
Thank you for this great compilation of material on research on robot motion.
I totally believe that robotics and an interdisciplinary perspective in motion studies (that you are conveying in you new blog) is very relevant.
For long time, I have been interested on robotics and its implication for the understanding on movement and the other way around: the importance of he knowhow of certain movement practitioners is very relevant for robotics.
As you know robotics is a very particular branch of AI or artificial intelligence and as such is part of the many disciplines that form what we call Cognitive Science.
I think that you are seeing something that is obvious, but not so obvious for dance practitioners.
Robotics scientists have to study movement and how movement is controlled and generated in biologicals systems. That is big step on the understanding of intelligence that includes motion as a cognitive process.
Motion as cognition is a recent development in cognitive science and its main implication is that how intelligence was conceived had to be reformulated. Conceiving intelligence as embodied, not language and representationally based helped to builds most of the robots that you have featured.
This robotics approach is called subsumption architecture and it implies the design with a bottom-up architecture (Rodney Brooks et all)
So, I think that robotics, and specially the new AI are very important for the understanding of movement and the emergent properties of being in the world with an embodied intelligence that is (biologically) designed bottom-up.
I just wanted to point out again that it is totally relevant and my experience had been that when I teach this connection I have to bring this awareness about notions of intelligence. Most of the time, when I talk to dances and choreographers about this connection with robotics and how exciting it is, most of the times, I encounter a very naive and romantic view about the body (and dance) that carries negative value against robotics as the most anti dance (against the natural body)
I believe that this research is crucial and is making us reformulate (for main stream science)what for dancers is obvious: we are interacting embodied minds and new robotics uses this approach to engineer "improvisational" robots that can self-organize behavior.
So, dance as we know it might be a relevant cognitive process with evolutionary importance and ther are many approaches in new dance that are already investigating this interface.
New Robotics is important for dance, but previously is important for its implication on the understanding of humanness and biological kinship.
There are and there have been an important cross-fertilization between performing arts and robotics (stelarc, Pablo Ventura,
Mareli Antunez Roca) just to name a few.
So, robots (thanks to Hollywood) and one of the most powerful images of control, de-humanization and are a very fertile field for artistic investigation but it is also the most important branch in cognitive science and with a direct implications for the dance science field.
New robotics, more than depicting/simulating movement is a way of conceiving systems that are bottom-up, decentralized, generative ( improvisational) and collaborative.
The implications are huge!
New York City,
10 May 2008
Hi Marlon,
Much thanks for sharing your thoughts about robotics, AI and cognitive science, and their relationship to dance and movement.
And sorry for delay in posting your comment - I accidentally overlooked it.
This is definitely an area that I'll continue to explore and cover in my blog.
If others in the dance and cognitive science fields are exploring this intersection (dance and robotics - and related topics), I'd be delighted to hear about them.
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