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30 August 2023 @ 12:30 pm

Computational Creativity, Embodiment and Performance

Rob Saunders & Petra Gemeinboeck

In this presentation we will present our creative robotics practice exploring embodied forms of computational creativity. The study of human and computational creativity frequently emphasises the generation of novel ideas, rather than embodied activity. In recent years, creative AI has caught the public imagination but has yet to address questions of embodiment. Our creative robotics practice revolves around the development of skilful performers able to facilitate the emergence of creative agency between humans and machines. Our current project, Machine Movement Lab, brings together creative robotics, choreographic strategies, and a posthuman dramaturgical frame, to explore our relationships with robots as more-than-human entanglements. An improvisational performance involving dancers, robot costumes and robots performed in a gallery space seeks to engage audiences in human-machine entanglements in embodied and empathic ways. Our presentation will explore how our embodied approach to computational creativity draws on practices of performance-making and notions of intercorporeal resonance.

Talk will be available below.

Becoming-Body: Petra Gemeinboeck

Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders’ collaborative practice has produced a series of performative, material inquiries into human-machine relationships. Spanning creative robotics, dance and choreography, new materialism, and computational creativity, their practice seeks to problematise our relations with machines by exploring questions of embodiment and agency through situated, performance-based encounters. Petra, born in Vienna (AT), is based in Melbourne, Australia, where she is an ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor at the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies, Swinburne University. She also leads the ‘Dancing with the Nonhuman’ FWF research project at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, AT. Rob, born in London (UK), is based in The Netherlands, where he is Associate Professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), Leiden University. Rob’s research explores computational creativity beyond the modelling of cognitive processes and human-machine interactions as embodied and embedded creative systems. Their artworks have been shown internationally, including at the Ars Electronica Festival (AT); International Triennial of New Media Art at NAMOC, Beijing (CN); Centre des Arts Enghien at Paris (FR), Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT), Liverpool (UK), Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (AU), ICC Tokyo (JP), and MCA Chicago (US).