In 1991, Donna Haraway famously stated that “the cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics” (p. 150). Marking a fusion between the technological and the ontological, the cyborg as a figure of thought has become a central companion to feminist studies of science and technology (FSTS) (see, e.g. Lykke 2010). This saloon is framed by the corresponding strand of cyborg feminism as a field of, for instance, researching the relations between humans and machines, respectively society and technology. More precisely, the saloon will focus on a specific kind of machine, the emerging class of a new generation of robots that are thought of as proximate machines – they should supposedly become companions or assistants to ‘us’ humans, living with ‘us’.

This saloon will bring together the feminist STS scholar Pat Treusch (TU Berlin) and the roboticist Morten Roed Frederiksen (ITU). Together, they will address the following questions: What kind of robots are envisioned and built in the present? And accordingly: How is ‘our’ future with robot technologies supposed to look like – but also, and importantly, how could it look like? Through this, the presenters will open up a field of tension between the conceptual and material groundings as well as imaginaries of emerging human/robot relations at the present on the one hand and on the other their individual ideas and practices on how these relations could be re-imagined and even re-crafted – beyond too humanistic patterns.

Such a conversation across disciplinary boundaries requires a careful mapping of the ontological as well as epistemological conditions and practices of developing robot technologies. Thus, the two presenters will give insights into their current projects, namely Treusch’s project “Do robots dream of knitting?” and Frederiksen’s work on embodied and affective robotics. While the first explores the practicalities of relating to robots by engaging in a cultural, material technology, namely knitting, together with a robot arm, the latter is about testing the ways in which affects are part of or even constitutive of human/robot relations.

Coffee & light refreshments provided | Contact: Jessica Sorenson jeso@edu.au.dkk to register your attendance.