• News
    • News
      • Latest News
      • Announcements
      • Calls for Papers
      • Vacancies
      • New PhD-research
    • Events
      • Events
      • NICA recommends
      • Event Calendar
  • Education
    • About NICA’s educational program
    • Course Overview
    • Core Courses
  • Research
    • Dissertation Defenses
    • Current PhD Research
    • Past PhD Research
  • Podcast
  • Organization
    • About us
    • Mission Statement
    • Becoming a member
    • Membership Directory
    • Organize an activity
  • Contact
  • Menu Menu

Performing Robots Conference: Dialogues Between Theatre and Robotics

February 19, 2019/in Archive /by Eloe Kingma

23-25 May 2019, Utrecht (the Netherlands)
Organized by Transmission in Motion (Utrecht University) and SPRING Performing Arts Festival
Call for Proposals
Deadline for Proposals: 7 March 2019

Robots are increasingly present, both in our daily life and on stage. Theatre makers explore the possibilities of these new technological performers and investigate the opportunities and
implications of a future of living with them. Also in daily life, the presence and behavior of robots raises questions that concern their dramaturgy and design: how do social robots address their
human co-performers and afford interaction with them? What scripts do they follow? How to design and choreograph their appearance and movements? How do their actions invite responses
and exclude others? How do they draw and sustain attention? How do they invite us to attribute character and meaning? What role do affect and persuasiveness play for a successful interaction?
Guy Hoffman observes that theater acting and other performing arts could serve Human Robot Interaction (HRI) as useful testbeds. Heather Knight identifies eight lessons about designing nonverbal interaction that can be learned from the theatre, and demonstrates the potential of comedy for experimenting with and testing out robot behavior and HRI. Elizabeth Jochum points to puppet theatre as source of knowledge and expertise about animating mechanical agents, and shows how theatre can be used to study interaction with care robots. Projects like Towards Corporeally Literate Social Robots (Petra Gemeinboeck) and the Pinoke Project (Deakin University) use expertise from the field of dance and interaction with dancers for new approaches to developing movement for robots.
This conference takes stock of interactions between theatre and robotics so far and looks at possibilities for future collaboration. What do the performing arts have to offer as inspiration, model, and testbeds for robots and for HRI? What does robotics have to offer to the theatre? How might collaboration between the performing arts and robotics contribute to further development of social robots, as well as to critical understanding of what it will mean to be living with them?
The conference will include performances by and/or dialogues with theatre makers Kris Verdonck, Rimini Protokoll, Dries Verhoeven, Angela Goh and others.
We are welcoming proposals for papers, demonstrations and other kinds of presentations by scholars and artists about interactions between theatre and robotics. Subjects may include, but are
not limited to:
– The use of knowledge and expertise (theories, analytical tools, practical expertise) from
the theatre for understanding and designing robot behavior and HRI.
– Practices of making theatre as inspiration for creative approaches to the process of developing robot behavior and HRI.
– The use of the theatre, and by extension theatrical contexts like festivals, as a site for experimentation with the behavior of robots, for trying out and testing ways of communicating with them, as well as for exploring scenarios for interacting and living with robots.
– Creative explorations of robotics by theatre and dance makers.

Proposals for papers should be 250 words in length, in addition to the following information: name of presenter(s), email address, short bio (maximum 50 words). Send proposals to TIM@uu.nl,
indicating “paper proposal” in the subject line. For other formats, please contact the organizers (TIM@uu.nl) with a short description of what this presentation would entail and what would be  required, as well as a short (50 words) bio.
Important dates:
Deadline for submissions: 7 March 2019
Notification of acceptance: 20 March 2019
Dates of the conference: 23-25 May 2019
Transmission in Motion https://transmissioninmotion.sites.uu.nl/
SPRING Performing Arts Festival https://springutrecht.nl/

Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates about our news, lectures, seminars, workshops and more.

Share this page

  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on X
  • Share on WhatsApp
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share by Mail

Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates about our news, lectures, seminars, workshops and more.

NICA archive 2010 – 2020

Read all articles published by Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis 2010 to 2020.

Affiliated Universities

  • Leiden University
  • Tilburg University
  • Radboud University
  • University of Amsterdam
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  • Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
  • University of Maastricht
  • Utrecht University
  • Open University

National Research Schools

  • ARCHON, Research School of Archaeology
  • Huizinga Instituut
  • LOT, Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics
  • NISIS, Netherlands Interuniversity School of Islamic Studies
  • NOG, Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies
  • NOSTER, Netherlands School for Advanced Studies in Theology and Religion
  • OIKOS, National Research School in Classical Studies
  • OSK, Dutch Postgraduate School for Art History
  • OSL, Onderzoekschool Literatuurwetenschap
  • OZSW, Dutch Research School of Philosophy
  • Posthumus Institute, Research School for Economic and Social History
  • Research School for Medieval Studies
  • RSPH, Research School Political History
  • RMeS, Research School for Media Studies
  • WTMC, Netherlands Graduate Research School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture

Useful Links

  • Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA)
  • Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR)
  • Amsterdam Research Center for Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS)
  • Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA)
  • Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM)
  • Babylon: Center for the Study of Superdiversity, Tilburg University
  • Benelux Association for the Study of Art, Culture, and the Environment (BASCE)
  • Centre for BOLD Cities
  • Centre for Gender and Diversity, Maastricht University
  • Leiden University Centre for Cultural Analysis (LUCAS)
  • Platform for Postcolonial Readings
  • Radboud Institute for Culture & History (RICH)
  • Research Institute of the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies (PTR)
  • Environmental Humanities Center Amsterdam
  • Centre for Environmental Humanities (UU)
© 2025 - Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA)
Website by Nikolai NL Design Studio
  • Privacy
  • Contact
Scroll to top Scroll to top Scroll to top