The Machine Movement Lab (MML) project is an arts-led research project that seeks to trouble and expand our relationships with machines. Co-founded by Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders in 2015, MML brings together dance improvisation and posthuman dramaturgy with robotics and machine learning, grounded in an enactive, performative framework. It is a collaboration with dancers, choreographers, AI researchers, engineers, and numerous materials—from cardboard, PVC tubes, plywood to aluminum framing, motors, motor controllers, cables, cable binders, and software programs – across robotics labs, dance studios, fab labs, and gallery spaces.
The project seeks to challenge conventional hierarchies in robotics by bringing together dancers' corporeal thinking and kinaesthetic empathy with machine learning to shape a more horizontal playground for human-machine encounters. Current visions of our near future with robotic companions are fuelled by a desire to render things more alive and relatable by blurring the differences between humans and machine-things.
Yet merely producing shallow reflections of us, this assimilation effort perpetuates the exclusive hegemonic politics that dismiss and demobilize the matterings of less privileged humans and nonhumans alike. Things mirroring (human) bodies thus only imprison both bodies and things in mimicry and servitude.
My Role
I joined this porject in June, 2024 as a postdoctoral research assistant. My role on this project is to lead studies, facilitate workshops, generate insights through the studies and publish our findings.
Overview of our last hrx (human-robot experience) workshop
The HRX Theatre Workshop invites participants to explore the social potential of machinelike artifacts. We aim to establish a creative playground for developing and enacting inclusive human-robot scenarios, harnessing the generative potential of movement. Our approach introduces the Relational Body Mapping (RBM) method, using robot costumes to facilitate perspective-taking and enable participants to step into the shoes of a robot, experiencing its unique affordances.
This immersive approach cultivates diverse perspectives beyond anthropocentric views, opening up new modes of empathy, nonverbal communication, and meaning-making with machinelike artifacts. By weaving together creative robotics, choreography, and dance, grounded in new materialism, we seek to transcend binary frameworks in HRI and cultivate a posthuman experience.
Themes
The workshop explores key questions and strategies for reimagining human-robot relationships through embodied, movement-based approaches. We particularly encourage participation from researchers and practitioners interested in:
• Bringing together embodied practices and technology
• Expanding their toolkit with embodied, experiential approaches
• Novel methodologies for human-robot interaction design
• Integrating the relational potential of movement qualities into work with robots
• Exploring transdisciplinary perspectives on human-robot relationships
• Expanding their toolkit with embodied, experiential approaches
• Novel methodologies for human-robot interaction design
• Integrating the relational potential of movement qualities into work with robots
• Exploring transdisciplinary perspectives on human-robot relationships
Our last workshop was at OzCHI (Australian Human-Computer Interaction Conference) in Brisbane, Australia. More information here: https://hrx-ozchi24.machinemovementlab.net/
