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Gallant Robotics

What if robots become gallant? What if they not only exhibit functional behavior, but are graceful in their movements, refined and vulnerable in their interactions and poetic in their aesthetics? What if robots exhibit a certain nonchalance or so-called sprezzatura? Robots are designed primarily for delineated functions, and these in turn determine how humans interact with them. But suppose that focus on expediency is dropped: what new relationships might emerge with these systems? Together with co-curator Professor Rosi Braidotti, three research themes have been identified within the Gallant Robotics project. The first theme relates to gallantry as a form of socially coded behavior in which certain forms were desired and others were not. In our contemporary interactions mediated by technology, socially desirable behavior is programmed into systems through digital code. The research theme Codes of Behaviour | Coded Behaviour explores how this norming can be made visible and what alternatives are possible. The projects developed within the second theme War | Sex | Machines of and for Seduction explored the role of seduction in interaction. Indeed, taste, sophistication and emotion acted as lubricants of social behavior.