In this interactive public art performance, a small group of vacuuming robots compete in a popularity contest. Just like in human life, each robot has a unique character. Some of them are cheerful, others grumpy and another will apologize constantly when bumping into obstacles. By feeding the robots, following their lives and personalities, and rooting for them to win the contest, visitors can interact with the petting zoo robots and shape who wins the popularity contest, and thus reveal more about the social relationships humans might forge with artificial agents.
This project was originally developed by artist Merel Bekking and scientific researchers Emily Cross & Ruud Hortensius at Bangor University in 2017, as part of an ESRC Impact Acceleration Award Creative Practitioner-in-Residence programme.
A dancer and cognitive neuroscientist by training, Emily leads the Social Brain Sciences Lab at ETH Zurich. Her dynamic team embraces interdisciplinarity to explore questions concerning how we learn via observation, acquire expertise, derive aesthetic pleasure from performing and visual artworks, and effectively collaborate with embodied robots via research paradigms that bridge technology, arts, and the biological and social sciences.
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