La Robot-Cygne – choreographic reflections on dancing through a mechatronical double

In my projects the objective is to explore choreographic perspectives focusing on research both in dance, on dance and for dance. Many artistic research projects are focusing the artistic process, while my research as a choreographer take another direction, by choosing to explore and reflect the phenomena focused in the artistic process.

The process then constitutes a research laboratory – rather than its object – where artistic knowledge is developed to capture perspectives that other fields of science do not bring out. In my research projects the choreographic works can be described as an outcome, which at the same time serves as a source for finding further perspectives and approaches.

In the presentation I will focus a choreographic project initiated at the department of robotics at Mälardalen University that includes the development of a custom made electromechanical robot-swan performing a dance solo to an electro acoustic remix of Pjotr Tchaikovsky’s music. To choreograph the robot I wanted to move the dancer by hand. The movement program interface is therefore developed so that it captures and records the joint movements of the skeleton – my physical modelling of the robot body. The objective of the research is to elaborate on how digital technology can deconstruct and reshape corporeality in a staging of ambiguous identities, when dancing through another body – a robot double. Other areas that will be explored are how we code and read the body when the dancer is not human. What makes us experience something as an eye, a palm or genitals? What makes us perceive a gaze, a voice or a body responding to touch? As part of a two folded research outcome, video sequences from the process and a documentation of La Robot-Cygne will be accessible on a DVD connected to a text on the body as a multistable phenomenon.

La Robot-Cygne
Choreography and movement programming: Åsa Unander-Scharin
Dancer: The Robot-Cygne
Music: Carl Unander-Scharin (remix of Pjotr Tchaikovsky)
Robot construction and software development: Prof. Lars Asplund and Alexander Larsson, School of Innovation, Design and Engineering at Mälardalen University

Åsa Unander-Scharin, Choreographer, PhD/ Research fellow
Luleå University of Technology/Dep. Music and media