Demonic Interventions

Abstract

The proliferation of robots in performative arts has brought awareness to a new kind of performative intervention, which -- uncanny by its very origin -- revisits the idea of human animatedness, and, more importantly, enquires after the nature and role of objects that have already functioned mostly as props. Inspired by contemporary machine performances - from Bill Vorn’s human-robot spectacles, to Marco Donnarumma’s performative fusions with technological things, to Giles Walker’s Robotic Burlesque, to Oriza Hirata’s quiet robot theatre -- the article analyses robots’ stage appearances to interpret them in terms of ‘demonic interventions’. Following the historically grounded reputation of automata as demon-like creatures, the article outlines the role of robots in performative art, with a special focus on the posthuman climax in which the human element seems to be gradually possessed by the ‘machinic’ (the robotic, the technologically engendered). The article explores the motivations of our turn to ‘technological objects’ to see why, despite much fear and scepticism, we invite them to spaces - ontological and performative - so far reserved for humans.

Notes

1 ‘Dress No 13’ from Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 1999 is available at https://bit.ly/2TLPtuz The entire show can be accessed at https://bit.ly/2HOxJww

2 Jean Royer, also referred to as Jean Royer of Lyon, was a seventeenth-century performer and engineer whose skill in ‘modern magic’, a combination of trickery and engineering for entertainment, has been described in The Great Art of Knowing: The Baroque encyclopedia of Athanasius Kircher by Daniel Stolzenberg (2001), and was referenced as early as 1909 in an article for Scientific American Supplement titled ‘Conjurers of the past: Precursors of the modern magician’ by Arthur Watson.

3 See ‘The Senster’ – short footage of the robot’s original performance – available at https://bit.ly/3kVOxQk It seems noteworthy that after the sculpture had been missing for almost forty years, The Senster – or what was left from its construction – was found and renovated by a group of experts from Jagiellonian University in Poland. The renovated (if not resurrected) sculpture is exhibited at Akademia Górnioczo-Hutnicza in Kracow, Poland, under the name The Senster 2.0 and can be seen in ‘The Senster 2.0’ at https://bit.ly/3mLhpvg

4 Bill Vorn (b. 1959) is a Canadian researcher, musician, performer and new media artist whose performance practice combines scientific expertise and artistic experimentation. His closest collaborator, Louis-Philippe Demers (b. 1959), is an academic, digital media artist and stage designer with whom he has carried out a number of projects that stem from the artists’ research and practical engagement with multimedia performance.

5 The most notable of which are: Espace vectoriel (1993), At the Edge of Chaos (1995), No Man’s Land (1996), La cour des miracles (1997), and Prehysterical (2002), Hysterical (2006) and Mega Hysterical Machines (2010).

6 Recycled Coil was designed for, and performed at, Transmediale 2014, where it was presented for a few hours a day for five days. During this time Ploeger would stand in the exhibition space next to a magnetometer receiving signals from a device attached to the coil on his abdomen. The device was sending 9 volts through the coil for 1 second every 3 seconds to stimulate the magnetometer placed in the exhibition space. The demonstration of the experiment can be seen at www.daniploeger.org/ recycled.

7 A detailed account of the play can be found in Hosoma et al. 2014.

8 Fragments of both the plays can be seen in ‘Robot Theatre at Japan Society’, a brief account of the event hosted by Japan Society in New York, an organization promoting Japanese culture. https://bit.ly/3oQAfCY

9 An insight into the play is offered in ‘Robots take center stage in Kafka’s "Metamorphosis" at https://bit.ly/36cxQdt.

10 See https://bit.ly/2JRlEqU

11 Masahiro Mori is a Japanese pioneer in robot construction, famous for his experiments with robot emotional capabilities/ affordances. His most notable work is The Buddha in the Robot (1981), describing a spiritual performance of automata and intelligent machines.

12 Giles Walker is a London-based contemporary kinetic artist and roboticist, specializing in animatronics. His installations have been presented in galleries and science institutions in Europe and the US. A member of the Mutoid Waste Company, Walker explores boundaries and connections between people and robots, artistically exploring the machinic side of the human and vice versa. His most prominent works include The Last Supper (2010), I’m Never Shopping Again (2012) and The Balloon Seller and Other Tragedies (2013). The Last Supper is a dark parody of Jesus’ final encounter with the Apostles, embodied by humanoid robots who mimic human conversations in a satirical way. The show was intended as a grim commentary on robots’ dark nature (https://bit.ly/34RyKfC). More information about the artist’s profile and work can be found at www.gileswalker.org

13 ‘DJ / Pola Dancing Robot’, sample footage of Walker’s Robot Peepshow presented at Mutate Britain, can be seen at https://bit.ly/3jSccja