SMCS on 11. ROBOTS!
Stedelijk Museum, in cooperation with socialfiction.org
Thursday, August 25, 2005
7:30 - 10:30 pm
Programme in English
Admission: free
Reserve a place via desk@stedelijk.nl
(no confirmation)

It was predicted that 2005 was going to be the year of robotics: more powerful hardware, improved technology, and the hope of financial backers that in the near future autonomous robots would be ready for the market. But the real problem that must be solved before robots like the ones announced can be built has not yet even been formulated. According to scientists, to a greater or lesser degree, progress in the autonomous skills of robots depends on progress in Artificial Intelligence.
Since Artificial Intelligence was presented as a separate research discipline in 1956, it has been an important source of surprising new insights into the foundations and definitions of intelligence and creativity. That alone would make this research field interesting to artists too.

How do you imitate intelligence in a different medium? By basing it on something which already exists. The debate which has been going on since at least as far back as Plato, about whether art can be anything other than the imitation of nature (mimesis), is also applicable for robotics. In other words: rather than inventing the wheel again, those working on robots would be better off entering into discussions with artists, and join them in exploring a realm of knowledge that for a long time now has been reflecting on the problems posed. In order to help robotics scientists over their first discomfiture, they have been invited to this evening.

Presentations:
Ben Kröse
Christoph Bartneck
Robodock
Demonstrations:
Leonel Moura
Arnoud Visser
Moderator:
Petran Kockelkoren 

Participants

Petran Kockelkoren holds the chair of Art and Technology in the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the University of Twente. In addition, he is reader in Art and Technology at ArtEZ, Hogeschool voor de kunsten.

Leonel Moura (Lisbon) is of the opinion that artists should stop making art and start focusing on making machines that will make art. If his art generated by robots has an aesthetic, then it is intended for the robots themselves. While he explains his views on human taste and interpretation in a world of autonomous machines, his robots will produce a new painting. www.lxxl.pt

Ben Kröse is university professor at the University of Amsterdam and lecturer in Digital Life at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. He is working on a cognitive robot for the European Cogniron project. In a collaboration between the Hogeschool and the University of Amsterdam he is studying the role of robots in medical care applications. He will lecture on the rise of robots in our everyday environment: what are the technical, cognitive and social characteristics of such robots? www.science.uva.nl/research/ias/

Arnoud Visser is a researcher in the Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS) group at the University of Amsterdam, which is occupied with developing intelligent and autonomous operating systems. He will demonstrate the Sony AIBO, a beautifully designed robot dog on which scientists from all over the world have turned loose their programming skills, with the aim of winning the AIBO football competition. Thanks to learning techniques developed by the IAS group, the robot football team from the UvA won the 2003 world championship simulation.

Robodock is a festival for robot art that is celebrating its 8th edition this coming September. Invariably using squatted industrial heritage structures such as harbour warehouses and grain silos as their sites, Robodock exhibits the apocalyptic-recyclist side of robots: Artificial Intelligence, not to play football but to destroy the stadium. The festival’s organiser will use its history to reveal the present state of affairs in robot art. www.robodock.org

To be acceptable as companions in our homes, robots must fulfil certain requirements which are more psychological than technical in nature. Christoph Bartneck will lecture on the sensitive line between robots that are ‘real’ and those that are ‘too real’, and other remarkable phenomena that robot designers must take into account if the budding relation between man and robot is to be successful. Bartneck is Senior Lecturer in the department of Industrial Design at the Technical University, Eindhoven. http://bartneck.de

SMCS on 11
SMCS on 11 is the programme of lectures, discussions, film and video presentations by Stedelijk Museum CS. The ‘11’ refers to the 11th storey of the Post CS Building, where most of the activities are held.

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