22nd and 23rd July 2025

Join our Somabotics team at Nottingham Contemporary on the 22nd July (4pm – 6.30pm) and/or the 23rd July (3pm – 7.30pm) to participate in Embrace Angels, a unique live experience where people and robots explore how to embrace together.

You will be invited to walk along a red carpet to where two robotic arms are waiting. As you and others move carefully towards one another, the robots respond in real time, playing and creating new embrace gestures through an AI system. Together, humans and machines generate a shared choreography of touch and trust.

A screen above will show how the AI interprets your movements and words (prompts) of onlookers, creating a dream-like loop of human-machine interaction, while meeting the unknown.

This event is a gentle, thoughtful invitation to ask:

· What does it mean to embrace someone—or something such as a robot?

· Can robots care for us the way humans can?

· How will AI shape our embraces in the future?

· What kind of memories can we make with AI by embracing each other?

A poetic, provocative encounter between art and science, focussed on the social body, Embrace Angels explores what it means to trust, feel, and connect—beyond the predictable mechanics and limitations of “safe” touch. In the heart of the experience is a living sculpture of movement, consent, vulnerability and play, where humans and machines attempt to embrace—and be embraced.

No prior experience needed. Just curiosity and a willingness to be part of something different.

Created by award-winning artists Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat, pioneers in AI, robotics and human intimacy. Their work has been shown at the Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, ZKM Karlsruhe, and more.

Embrace Angels is a live, interactive experience. Audience participation is invited but not required.

Suitable for ages 12+. Under 18s must be accompanied by an adult.

Tickets cost £3 each. Each ticket is for a half-hour time slot which you can select when you book.

This work is supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through the Turing AI World Leading Researcher Fellowship: Somabotics: Creatively Embodying Artificial Intelligence [grant number EP/Z534808/1]