Rhythm Bots
What a joy to continue this fascinating collaboration with Naomi Ehrich Leonard, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. We first collaborated in 2010 on the site-specific performance piece Flock Logic, exploring what happens when human movers apply the rules used in models of flocking birds and schooling fish. More recently, we collaborated on the performance-installation Rhythm Bath, which offers an inviting space connecting audiences and performers through synchronized and rhythmic human movement. This collaboration led to questions about the possibilities for rhythmic connection between humans and robots.
Presented May 6–9, 2022 at Philadelphia’s Pink Noise Projects, Rhythm Bots is a work at the intersection of multi-robot dynamics, human-robot interaction and art. It’s an actively controlled kinetic sculpture of synchronously moving robots that provides a site for choreography in the patterns of the rhythm bots and in the ways that the rhythm bots interact with people who approach or walk through the installation space. The work explores how the synchronous movement of rhythm bots supports rhythmic connection to members of an audience, how emergent communication through bodily movement can inform the response of rhythm bots to audience members, and ultimately how the experience of Rhythm Bots makes people feel and makes possible an active and meditative public space of connection.
Image: Isla Xi Han