When Robots Get Emotional

CRITICAL MEDIA and the Fac­ul­ty of Art,
Ontario Col­lege of Arts & Design
presents “Art Cre­ates Change”
April 8, 2002 6pm @ The Riv­o­li, 334 Queen St. West
“When Robots get emo­tion­al” – Machiko Kusa­hara in con­ver­sa­tion with Nor­man White

Takashi Koezu­ka Con­sul Gen­er­al of Japan inau­gu­rates the event. The Japanese/Canadian Xchange2 project exam­ines the atti­tude to and the use of robot­ics in var­ied cul­tur­al envi­ron­ments. Machiko Kushara has an inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion on the top­ic of the Japan­ese robot­ic cul­ture and Nor­man White is Canada’s most out­stad­ing artist involved with robots. In the dia­logue pro­posed between Kushara and White cur­rent issues will be exam­ined and dis­cussed such as the new push in Japan­ese robot­ics toward “emo­tion­al” sophis­ti­ca­tion. The Toron­to event, host­ed by the Ontario Col­lege of Art and Design forms a part of a well adver­tised series with a large audience.

Machiko Kusa­hara
curator/media researcher
Asso­ciate Professor
Kobe Uni­ver­si­ty Grad­u­ate School of
Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Rokko,
Nada, Kobe 657 JAPAN

Machiko Kusa­hara is an inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized cura­tor in media art and is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Media Research in Kobe Uni­ver­si­ty Grad­u­ate School of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy. With her back­ground both in art, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, she has been teach­ing com­put­er graph­ics, mul­ti­me­dia and media study since 1985. She has been invit­ed to teach reg­u­lar­ly at both IAMAS and IMI, Japan’s major schools of media art, since the begin­ning. She has been an active researcher and writer on the sub­ject of new media since 1984.

Nor­man White is an artist and an inven­tor with a spe­cial inter­est in obso­lete tech­nol­o­gy and robot­ics. He began teach­ing at OCAD in 1978 and since 1988, Nor­man has been work­ing with his stu­dents at OCAD to present the annu­al Sumo Robot Chal­lenge. This year’s event takes place on Sat­ur­day, May 4th at the Ontario Sci­ence Cen­tre. In his own words, the event is an exten­sion of his inter­est in “…build(ing) machines which bash, taunt and insult each other.”

The first phase of the Japanese/Canadian Xchange2 project by Crit­i­cal Media has been sup­port­ed by the Cana­da Coun­cil for the Arts with the assis­tance of the Japan/Canada Fund, a gift to the Cana­da Coun­cil for the Arts from the Gov­ern­ment of Japan.