Embrace Angels

show overview
Performance & Installation
start research October 2024
Nottingham, Amsterdam,
- Mixed Reality Lab (MRL), University of Nottingham (UK). Prof. Steve Benford. - UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Turing AI World-Leading Researcher Fellowship. - ass.Prof. A. Block (Case Western University USA) in collaboration with Max Planck Institute (DE). - Animation in collaboration with Sander Bos (NL). - LiMa Living Media Art Platform Amsterdam - Mondriaan Fund - Creative Industries Fund NL

Embracing Robots. Increasingly, we embrace hug-, care- and sex-bots. But while humans can project empathy on bots, bots in turn lack empathy, necessary to reciprocally perform safety of movement (Asimov 1950) and tuning to unpredictable human behavior, as equals in intimacy. Bots must be designed to stay physically distant from humans (e.g. autonomous Robot 'Spot' ). They cannot take initiative to hug, humans must embrace passive waiting robots (e.g. 'Huggiebot’ (Max Planck Institute 2023)).

Scientists, now claim this will cause empathy and reciprocity to become extinct in the future. Connections with Asimov’s ‘safe’ Robots, that passively wait our embracing approach, and which do not play, risk, or perform unpredictably, less stimulate our empathetic and meaningful interaction. And what we do not practice, we will unlearn.

What is an embrace? Worldwide, a human embrace is a ritual for well-being, love, sex, comfort, joy and reconciliation. Empathy and trust are essential: while we move towards each other, with (un)predictable movements, we take risk of pain, discomfort and injury (e.g. by (accidental) colliding, unwanted touch). In this way, we reciprocally play with expectation, imagination and ambivalent body boundaries, to activate our sense of empathy and create shared and personal meaning. Every embrace is unique. Interestingly, brain research shows that we can also feel embraced when seeing others hugging (Mirror-touch). As artists we call this complex, amazing interplay in different cultural contexts: EMBRACE INTELLIGENCE.

This leads to critical questions: Do we still dare to hug people in the future? And do we trust robots? Can we imagine new rituals for embracing each other and robots, sensing intimacy and reciprocity? Can we perform sustainable embrace rituals with fluid body-machine connections, with robots as embracing companions? Embrace Angels investigates expanding our bodily experience and create a sustainable collective, bio-technical intelligent embracing ritual, for inclusive planetary love.

Developed in collaboration with and support by: