Somoure

This is a video essay created in order to document the conceptual part of first period of the artistic research project.

Video credits
Original idea and research, direction and script by Mónica Rikić
Art direction and visual conceptualization, photography and technical production by Agustina Isidori
Original music by Rodolfo Venegas

W.I.P Artistic research project in collaboration with the Institute of Robotics and Industrial Informatics from Barcelona (IRI CSIC-UPC). Project funded by a S+T+ARTS in the City program with Hacte.

Somoure is an artistic research project that explores assistive robotics from a critical and experimental perspective. I have been working on it since October 2023 in collaboration with the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (IRI CSIC-UPC) in Barcelona. The project does not view care robots as a technological problem to be solved but rather as a assemblage of interconnections shaping our expectations of future societies.

The IRI’s initial proposal was to collaborate with artists to develop strategies to improve the social acceptance of their robots. However, upon arriving at the lab and observing the production methods for these devices, I realized that the project addressed much deeper questions: How do we imagine aging in the [non]future? Which voices have the power and access to define it? Should care be confined to the intimate sphere, or should it be approached from a political and communal perspective? Is improving «acceptance» of technology enough when we are unable to improve the conditions of care, from precarity to privatization and its depoliticization?

The research aims to provide a broad perspective on the social agents involved in caregiving—collaborating with caregivers, users, domestic worker unions, and disability rights activists. It takes a retrospective look at care traditions and their delegation to technology. These voices will be invited to discuss topics related to care, technology, and perspectives on the «human» and «non-human,» addressed through posthumanist, queer, feminist, and anti-racist lenses.

The project focuses on Nyam, a robotic arm designed at the IRI to feed individuals who cannot feed themselves. The conceptual weight of the act of eating and being fed adds a layer to the project, allowing it to tackle the public-private-political issue of caregiving and assistance from a deeply emotional and visceral perspective. The artistic production includes documenting the development of the robotic arm to create an artistic replica of my own, presenting the process of creating the robot as a caregiving process in itself. Its form, behavior, and code architecture will be modified to reflect the philosophical and social concerns surrounding robotics and caregiving that emerge during the research and collective co-design process.

Development and Methodology

The development process of the artistic research, closely related to my artistic practice, is based on handcrafting one of the lab’s robots called Nyam (a small arm that feeds people who cannot feed themselves). This process has the general conceptual intention of transforming the robot creation process into a care process itself.

Following the maker and hacker philosophies, this ‘creation’ action advocates that involving the robot user in the creation process can effectively address the concerns faced by the lab, such as roboethics, privacy, trust, explainability, comprehensibility, and social acceptance. It also rejects the idea that technological production is a privileged space reserved for specialists and engineers.

The collaborative design process has been carried out through conversational groups and interviews with specialists from various fields such as arts, humanities, and engineers dedicated to tool development, but also with domestic labor unions (with a strong focus on migration in our local context) or anti-ableist activists. The aim was to discuss and share their ideas to incorporate them into the development and production of the artistic reproduction of the robot. This research and creation process is designed to include diverse perspectives from social agents involved in care, ranging from traditional practices to the implications of technological delegation of these tasks.

Outcome

The DIY robot is central as an artistic object. The modified code architecture is a crucial part of the project, so the code is also displayed, and the audience is able to follow the live execution of the behavior tree.

This allows the audience to ‘read’ the robot’s decision-making process when approaching a human and, for example, discover how it interprets the user’s consent to be fed through the camera: starting from the original version of opening/closing the mouth to how this process can be interpreted through different social and phylosophical perspectives translated into algorithms.

Moreover, the robot’s materials and form will critically address the themes raised in the research, such as why social robots need human attributes and how we interpret this through queer theories and our relationship with the non-human, applying it to the design process.

Project exhibitied at Manifesta15 Biennal in Barcelona 2024