Robot visions

Abstract

This article explores the resonating figures of primate, child, and robot in contemporary technoscientific corporealizations of the 'almost human'. We take as our model (in)organism 'Lucy the Robot Orangutan', roboticist Steve Grand's project to create an artificial life form with a mind of its own. One aspect of Lucy's figuration by Grand, we argue, which ties her to Haraway's analysis of the primate, is of the robot as a model for animal, and more specifically (or aspirationally) human, cognition. We follow the trope of 'model organism' as it is under discussion within science and technology studies and as an ironic descriptor for our own interest in Lucy as an entity/project through which to illuminate figurations within robotics more widely. Primate and robot together are forms of natureculture that help to clarify how the categories of animal and machine are entangled, while making explicit investments in their differences from one another, and from the third category of the human. We conclude, again following Haraway, by imagining what other possibilities there might be for figuring humans, robots, and their relations if we escape the reiterative imaginary of the robot as proxy for becoming human.

Health beyond the carbon barrier

“…If, as some theorists contend, 'human' is part of a continuum that includes the 'nonhuman', then we have to face the possibility that these are not anthropomorphic projections based on an illusion that a mechanical object is 'alive enough' (Turkle 2011; also see Castaneda and Suchman 2014;Suchman 2007). 9 Rather, it may be that informatic media are producing forms of material-cognitive continuity that are taking the human beyond the carbon barrier.…”

Tema 2: Robot technologies, autism and designs for learning

“…The authors state that the field of research into social robotics could gain from drawing on anthropologically oriented research and design anthropology, and that participatory design approaches could serve as sources of interest -mostly for the purpose of placing the articulation work of relating robots to education in everyday and ongoing educational activities. Castañeda and Suchman (2014) also stress the importance of delving into the work of figuring and refiguring robots. The authors point at the importance of acknowledging that different articulations of robots take part in bringing them -and hence also their capabilities --into being.…”

Science in performance

“…Such analysis also registers an ecological concern with reimagining and reconfiguring relationships with the nonhuman, whether this is Myon's plastic and metal components or indeed with the other species that reside inside and outside the human body. Lucy Suchman, Claudia Castañeda and Donna Haraway have all written extensively about the similarities between the way scientific research makes mimetic use of nonhuman species and machinic 'model organisms' (Castañeda and Suchman 2013;Haraway 1991). However, a new media dramaturgy that looks to foreground relationships and background the entities themselves seems to miss political and aesthetic features of My Square Lady that I found the most striking and funny.…”