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‘Face Robots’ Onscreen: Comfortable and Alive

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Book cover Cultural Robotics (CR 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9549))

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Abstract

This chapter draws upon the author’s experimental video artwork Comfortable and Alive, made with the Japanese gynoid robot Geminoid-F by ATR Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories, to facilitate a wider, yet fractional, discussion of the cultural provenance and potential integration of specifically female-appearing android robots (gynoids). The “display architecture” of the gynoid can be viewed as an aesthetic emulation by robot designers of the centuries-old characterization of girls and women as naïve, pretty, submissive and soothing; this construction also pervades televised and other media. At the present time it is viewed as ideal that the service gynoid should make humans feel comfortable, most often in companionship, entertainment, hostessing, and reception roles. The artwork raises poignant issues pertaining to machine translation, and human–machine affinity, in context of the replication in robots of societal gender norms.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Australian Federal Government through an Australian Postgraduate Award.

Comfortable and Alive has been shown in 2015 at UNSW Galleries, Sydney in the solo exhibition Beyond Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and in 2016 at Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland in the group exhibition Alter. For preview screeners, contact the artist at elenaknox.com.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    Elena Knox

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  1. Elena Knox
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Correspondence to Elena Knox .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Creative Robotics Lab UNSW Art & Design , Paddington, Australia

    Jeffrey T.K.V. Koh

  2. Creative Robotics Lab , Paddington, New South Wales, Australia

    Belinda J. Dunstan

  3. Creative Robotics Lab , Paddington, Australia

    David Silvera-Tawil

  4. Creative Robotics Lab , Paddington, Australia

    Mari Velonaki

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Knox, E. (2016). ‘Face Robots’ Onscreen: Comfortable and Alive . In: Koh, J., Dunstan, B., Silvera-Tawil, D., Velonaki, M. (eds) Cultural Robotics. CR 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9549. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42945-8_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42945-8_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-42944-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-42945-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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