A history of robot camp: performing beyond the uncanny valley, from early twentieth-century automata to contemporary science fiction theatre

ABSTRACT

In this work, I intervene in discussions of robot performance, pointing to a history of a performance mode I classify as ‘robot camp’ that, in offering techniques that overcome potential affective repulsion to these near-human machines, shifted the trajectory of the relationship between humans and robots. I first invoke ideas of theatre artists Edward Gordon Craig and Oriza Hirata, along with theatre scholar Louise LePage’s reinterpretation of Judith Butler’s ‘performativity’, in order to offer a consideration of the robot as a performer. This leads to a reframing of Steve Dixon’s ‘metallic camp’ in conversation with Masahiro Mori’s concept of the uncanny valley (and through a return to Susan Sontag’s foundational ‘Notes on “Camp”’), through which I theorize the performance strategy of robot camp. I trace robot camp throughout the history of performative robot portrayals, primarily early twentieth-century automaton exhibitions and Elizabeth Meriwether’s contemporary science fiction play Heddatron, foregrounding how techniques of robot camp have been successfully employed to overcome affective uneasiness toward the robot (i.e., manifestations of the uncanny valley); in doing so, I highlight how live theatre has shaped public engagements with and imaginings of the robot from its early origins.

KEYWORDS:

• Robot
• camp
• uncanny valley
• automaton
• science fiction
• theatre

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Professor William Davies King and Professor Jessica Nakamura for their insight and feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. While artificial mechanical beings exist in narratives prior to R.U.R., Čapek ([1920]2019) coined the term ‘robot’ and his work established many of the robot’s now-common narratives.

2. This English translation was introduced in Reichardt (1978). Robertson (2018, 153, 156) notes ‘that bukimi is more accurately translated as a “bad (bu) feeling (kimi)” in the sense of spooky, eerie, disconcerting, or frightening’ and that ‘“[v]alley of eerie feeling” is closer to Mori’s meaning’. ‘Uncanny valley’ suggests a link to Jentsch ([1906]1997), which references readers’ uncertainty surrounding a story about a fictional lifelike automaton, and Freud's ([1919] 1955) subsequent essay The Uncanny, which critiques Jentsch’s work and offers a rival but similarly unsettling definition of the ‘uncanny’; however, some (including Karl F. MacDorman [Mac Dorman, Vasudevan, and Ho 2009, 485], an original translator of Mori’s essay), believe these links to be unintentional. Regardless, Reichardt’s translation is wide-spread and largely accepted.

3. This approach can be generative and many scholars offer insightful examinations that place in conversation performances featuring robots, cyborgs, and other new media and technologies (for example, see Parker-Starbuck 2011; Eckersall, Grehan, and Scheer 2017).

4. For a collection of press and promotional clippings of Alpha in various forms, see Hoggett 2009.

5. Camp as a queer aesthetic strategy to navigate heteronormative cultural contexts foregrounds its capacity for making socially acceptable the otherwise unaccepted; while the negotiation of acceptability holds true for robots, the notion of personal identity is troubled in these cases. For commentary on camp as a practice of queer performance/expression, see Cleto 1999.

6. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many friendlier fictional robots – C-3PO (Star Wars), Rosie (The Jetsons), Baymax (Big Hero 6), etc. – are stylized in design, contrasting with their human-appearing counterparts, such as the Terminator, the advanced Cylons of Battlestar Gallactica, or the hosts of Westworld, which are often more threatening in characterization.

7. Further contemporary cases that demonstrate the efficacy of (or the necessity for) robot camp include Gob Squad’s AI-driven opera My Square Lady, real-world robots like Sophia and BINA 48 (uncannily lifelike Hanson Robotics creations that are charmingly self-deprecating in humor), ASIMO (the Honda robot with a notably simplified form), consumer robots (self-driving cars, automated vacuum cleaners, etc.), and theme park animatronics.

8. The discrepancy in affinity between stylized and realistic appearance can be further seen in contemporary theatre by comparing Hirata’s Sayonara, which starred the human-appearing but rather lifeless Geminoid F, and the play often performed alongside it, I, Worker, which featured more charismatic yet only vaguely humanoid robots.

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Cole Remmen

Cole Remmen is a PhD candidate in the Theater Studies program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received an MA in Theater Studies from UCSB and a BA in Theatre Arts with a minor in Cinema and Media Culture from the University of Minnesota. In his research, Cole investigates the intersections of science and performance, examining how performance is used in scientific communities in the development and communication of knowledge and how science is engaged with onstage in new science-driven theater works. Through his research, Cole seeks to forge new interdisciplinary connections between the sciences and humanities. In his creative work, Cole has directed, performed, and served as dramaturg in numerous productions and workshops with the UCSB Department of Theater and Dance, the University of Minnesota Department of Theatre Arts and Dance, as well as Ensemble Theatre Company (Santa Barbara), Theater Latté Da (Minneapolis), and Theater Arts Caltech. As a playwright, Cole has written numerous plays and musicals, including From the Earth to the Moon (a new musical based on the classic Jules Verne novel), RUR2020 (a contemporary reimagining of Karel Čapek’s prescient R.U.R.), Creon, P.I. (a film noir take on Oedipus Rex), and Boldly Go! (an original musical parody of Star Trek).