Robot “Machina” and Puppet “Coppélia” a video study in anthropomorphization
We humans have millennia-old fantasies about other beings. We animate them as humanoid creatures so that they are available to us as references or substitutes. At times, they might be generous or selfish, helpers or predators, playful or earnest, reliable or unpredictable.
This is a short story about this new category of technology – of machines and devices that decide by themselves and behave as if they were alive.
We are the first generation that is about to live and work with technology that resembles us humans. Additionally, we are the first to see how well-established cultural fantasies, robots, and artificial intelligences become artefacts of the banal everyday.
Social humanoid robots get shaped like us – partly – along what is desired to be utilitarian in material space. Artificial intelligences mimic our way of thinking – vaguely – in what is understood to be utilitarian in decision making. In many senses, both technologies are our Doppelgängers, partly and vaguely serving a new utilitarian corporeal reality.
A video,
to study anthropomorphization, based on the event “Robot Machina will visit the opera performance of the doll “Coppélia” at the Vienna Volksoper” and the following TV coverage, documented in “Robot Machina and her friend Eva reminisce on visiting the windup doll “Coppélia” at the Vienna Volksoper 5.2.19“
A text,
- Essay „Fantasies in Disguise“ reflects on the video “Machina visits Coppélia.”
- „Report on the field study“ to develop a hypothesis on anthropomorphization.