Speakers

Madeline Balaam

Title:  Designing Soft Robotic Touch for the Intimate Body

Abstract: Robots will care for, wash, and handle people in care homes, or patients in hospitals. Car seats will touch a driver’s back, bottom and thighs as they drive to draw their attention to road conditions and potential dangers. Technologically augmented t-shirts will touch a person’s stomach to simulate a foetus’ heartbeat and help mediate and share the experience of pregnancy. These are just a few of the ways in which autonomous systems are predicted to touch us in the next 20 – 30 years. While technological advances are beginning to make this vision feasible, we have no clear understanding of how to design this touch in ways which are dignified, safe, or pleasurable. We do not know what touch with technology should feel like, or how we should create these experiences with digital and physical materials. And this is a significant problem. Without this knowledge and skill in how to achieve ‘good’ touch these systems will simply fail or result in technologies which people do not want use, which are unacceptable and undignified.

In this talk Madeline will illustrate the work that her team has been undertaking in the design of the Pelvic Chair to help answer some of these questions. Using a Soma Design approach Madeline and her team have designed a soft robotic chair – the Pelvic Chair. The Pelvic Chair touches the pelvic region including touching the lower back and its sides, inner thighs, the areas near and around the inner pelvic floor area - vulva and sitting bones. The touch from the Pelvic Chair guides the user by indicating the start and end points of the muscles, the location of contact, and the way a muscle can move, while revealing connections to other areas of the body. As a piece of Research-through-Design the Pelvic Chair provides an exemplar of a soft robotic touch that offers a safe and dignified touch of the intimate body, and a touch that participants considered neither machine-like, nor human-like. Using the Pelvic Chair as a case study, Madeline will argue for the importance of attending to the felt, sensory and emotional quality of touch in all kinds of technology-initiated touches, whether they be intimate ones, or not.

Bio: Madeline Balaam is a Professor in Interaction Design at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, where she works with a team of wonderful researchers on designing technologies and interactions at the intersection of intimate health, the body and touch. She takes a feminist perspective to her research which is perhaps best illustrated through the kinds of topics and issues that her design work examines and troubles. Madeline has published her work extensively at ACM CHI and ACM DIS and has received five best paper awards from ACM venues over the last six years. Her work is funded by Vetenskåpsrådet, Digital Futures and the European Research Council. 

Louis-Philippe Demers

Title: A Test of Reality

Abstract: Is touch a “test of reality”? Touch comes with resistance or a sensation of force, requiring an active response from the subject. It makes the world real to us. In staging close-contact human-robot interactions, such as in The Blind Robot and Inferno, I aim to illustrate how robotic art can stimulate interdisciplinary debate and enhance our understanding of human-robot touch.

Artistic strategies may seek to destabilize sensory perceptions to create altered bodily experiences, challenging concepts of authenticity. Is robotic mimicry of touch always a cognitive dissonance? How might robotic manipulation of the body become a pleasurable experience? How can I mediate robotic touch solely through the mise-en-scène of its interaction?

Touch encompasses multiple dimensions of the body—skin and flesh—emphasizing the intertwined experiences of internal and external perception, shaped by the pliability or plasticity of bodies, functions, and identities. Art complicates the process of perception, manipulating bodies in various ways, from prosthetics to aesthetics. My projects, performances, and installations foster “feeling-with” and “feeling-others,” laying the foundation for intercorporeality and intersubjectivity. The space or stage itself offers a texture, an atmosphere, to be felt or experienced.

I will discuss The Blind Robot from both audience and technological perspectives. An uncanny experience of touch arises not only from bodily sensations but also from the potential of proximity, anticipation, and perceived remoteness. Regarding Inferno, I will explore intersubjectivity, the persistent touch of an exoskeleton, and how audiences embrace exerted forces to suspend disbelief. I will also describe projects that challenge the body (and its tactile surface) via robotic “animals,” where encounters are staged to heighten anticipation of impending touch, as in crossing paths in a narrow corridor.

Facilitating radically immersive experiences in experimental art contexts generates fragments of uncharted sensations. The mediation of tactile experiences, the generation of somatic sensations in unfamiliar ways, or the ability to touch and be touched by others need to be mapped and organized—a sort of morphology of feeling—to make the elusive nature of touch experiences more transparent.

Bio: Louis-Philippe Demers is a Full Professor in Kinetic Imaging at VCUArts Qatar. A multidisciplinary artist, designer, and researcher, he is known for his interactive robotic installations and immersive experiential works, having created over 400 machines for diverse settings such as theatres, museums, and public spaces. His work has been recognized at major international festivals and events, including Ars Electronica, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Vida, SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and the Helpmann Awards. Demers holds a Ph.D. in Robotic Performances, and his current research focuses on experiential and immersive artworks, participation, and procedural authorship as generative systems. Demers has been involved with institutions such as the University of the Arts/ZKM (Germany) and the School of Art, Design and Media at NTU (Singapore). He was a principal investigator at NTU’s Interaction and Entertainment Research Centre. He later served as Director of the Creative Lab and Full Professor of Creative Innovation at Queensland University of Technology (Australia), and has held visiting professorships at University of the Arts London, Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and the Applied Arts University in Vienna.