NEEDLE WORK-Revealing relational agency aesthetics of craft through human/robot interaction

Abstract

NEEDLE WORK is created at The National Facility for Human-Robot Interaction in Australia and explores new models of cultural transmission and education by retracing and interpreting the gestures of craft. The framework for creative production is collaborative - between people, technologies, and material agency. NEEDLE WORK translates micro-scale craft gestures, into human-scale three dimensional robotic light drawings. The light drawings inform human-robot interaction, exploring a mode of generative choreography as an aesthetics of change, viewing a sequence of gestures as chapters in performance. The conceptual lens focusses on process-oriented qualities and embodies a relational aesthetic view of agency that engages the dynamism between entities. Performing immaterial praxis of intangible cultural heritage crafts explores the creative potential of co-design, engaging human, machine, and material agency, and opens new perspectives to understand and interpret the value of craft.