Exploding the android: encounters with social robotics in a science centre

ABSTRACT

This paper examines science centre displays incorporating robotic technologies to provoke reflection on social robotics. Drawing on research in post-phenomenology and science and technology studies, it considers how exhibits in Born or Built? about robotic emotion undermine its framing narrative of human-robot convergence. Comparing these science centre exhibits to social robotics demonstrations draws attention to how the exhibits move away from convincing audiences about the truth or merits of these technologies to instead convey their difference and open-endedness. While there are limited popular narratives and images to invoke in exploring these ideas, relationships can be drawn between the displays and historical automata and contemporary robotic artwork, practices that frequently seek to promote reflection on robotic otherness, appearance and relationality. Representing robots with robotics points towards the relevance of style to conceptualising robotic diversity and materiality. Style in this sense is not simply an embellishment or surface addition to content, but a material expression inseparable from what is communicated and relative to technological, cultural and social milieus.

KEYWORDS:

• Social robotics
• robots
• anthropomorphism
• science centre
• emotion

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the staff at Questacon for making this research possible by providing access to documentation on the development of Born or Built?.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Established in 1982, Questacon is Australia’s first science centre, one of many inspired by San Francisco’s Exploratorium founded in 1969. Globally, such institutions emerged in response to the demand for public education about science after World War II, inspired by Paris’s science museum, the Palais de la Décoverte (1937), and world fairs (Rydell 2006; Beretta, Canadelli, and Ronzon 2019). They are marked by animated and interactive displays as techniques of educating the public (Friedman 2007, 68).

2 This approach continues a twentieth-century trend of centring science centre exhibits on the ethical and social issues surrounding science and technology and moving beyond demonstrating the scientific principles of ‘hard’ sciences (Bell 2008).

3 Experts interviewed for the research and information panels, not all of whom were commenting on social robots, but many of whom raised issues relevant to them included Stelarc (artist), Professor Genevieve Bell (Director of the School of Cybernetics, Director of the 3A Institute, Australian National University, ANU), Professor Simon Foote Adam (Director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research, ANU), Professor Tom Gedeon (Leader of Human-Centred Engineering Group College of Engineering and Computer Science, ANU), Associate Professor Damith Herath (Robotics and Arts, University of Canberra), Dr Rachel Brown (School of Philosophy, ANU), Dr Jenny Davis (School of Sociology, ANU), Dr Alison Kershaw (School of Cybernetics, ANU), Dr Sabrina Caldwell (College of Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics, ANU), Dr Colin Clyne (Associate Professor of Philosophy, ANU), Dr Ben Swift (Lead of the Code, Creativity and Culture group, Research School of Computer Science, ANU) and (Dr Adam Henschke, National Security College, ANU) (unpublished notes).

4 Further details of the exhibition can be found at: https://www.questacon.edu.au/outreach/travelling-exhibitions/born-or-built.

5 Emotion is often considered to be centred around the subject and what an event means to them. In contrast, affect is not subjective inner feeling but a pre-personal process that occurs in the social and cultural ensembles of people and things (Massumi 2002). Emotions and affect between robots and humans highlight how affect and emotion are inter-related material-semiotic processes. For ease of expression I will largely be using the term emotion.

6 Although the exhibits are presented here in an order for the purposes of discussion, the exhibition has no set pathway.

7 Other non-instrumental machines titled ‘Useless machines’ include those designed by the artist Bruno Munari, a series of delicate mobiles designed to contrast the usefulness of machines with the uselessness of art (Antonello 2009, 315).

8 Unlike a software artificial intelligent agent, a robot operates in the concrete world and has a physical body (Bartneck et al. 2020).

9 References to robotic domination and killer robots was regularly made in visitor responses to one of the exhibits, Question and Answer of the Day (Bilgin et al. 2022, 6).

10 The inclusion of soft robotics and swarm robotics would further extend the diversity of robotic styles in the exhibition.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erika Kerruish

Erika Kerruish is a researcher and senior lecturer in the Faculty of Arts, Business and Law at Southern Cross University. Her research is at the intersection of continental philosophy and computational technologies and digital media and examines questions of affect and perception in digital culture.