Lancel/Maat

Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat (Studio Lancel/Maat for Art, Technology, Science and Philosophy) are considered pioneers exploring our sense of ‘togetherness’ in our social biotech world). In their internationally exhibited and award-winning interactive performances, installations, live art and videos, they explore future embodied experience and imagination of A.I.-shaped intimacy and empathy; identity and privacy; security and presence, control and trust, in entanglement with (non-)human others.

In our socio-technical world, physical touch between people is becoming increasingly rare,  and we are turning more and more to social robots for intimacy, to hold and embrace us. These robots, designed to mimick human embraces, are starting to replace humans in contexts such as combating loneliness. But the ethical A.I. design of such robots offers only a limited form of embracing. Indeed, robots must not risk hurting people. As a result, they never move unpredictably—and so they remain stiff dolls. How do humans experience these robot embraces? Unlike robots, our embrace begins with mutual trust: our arms reach reach out to each other, at the risk of possible discomfort, or even pain. We hold each other, care for one another, sense each other, and seek a shared rhythm and imagination. This leads to the questions: if we only embrace with “risk-free” and predictable robots, do we lose the ability to play together, take risks, empathize, and trust? And in the future, will we still dare to embrace other humans? Or can we imagine new collective intelligent rituals for our entangling, embracing cyborg bodies? Embrace Angels is a long term investigation into intimacy, AI and robots, exploring how humans and robots can embrace each other.

A poetic, intimate human-A.I. ritual for a group embrace among humans and robots, and for robots who long to embrace one another, Embrace Angels invites audiences into an immersive ritual of embracing in interplay with two robotic arms and a generative AI. The idea emerged from Lancel/Maat’s residency at Nottingham’s Cobot Maker Space in July 2023 and builds on our partner Alexis Block’s research into autonomous hugging robots.

Lancel Maat

Alexis Block at Case Western Reserve University

Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham

Cobot Maker Space, University of Nottingham

University of Exeter, Performance and New Media Art

LI-MA, Amsterdam

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

TU Delft