Article ID: CBB001421174

Robot Visions (2014)

unapi

This article explores the resonating figures of primate, child, and robot in contemporary technoscientific corporealizations of the `almost human'. We take as our model (in)organism `Lucy the Robot Orangutan', roboticist Steve Grand's project to create an artificial life form with a mind of its own. One aspect of Lucy's figuration by Grand, we argue, which ties her to Haraway's analysis of the primate, is of the robot as a model for animal, and more specifically (or aspirationally) human, cognition. We follow the trope of `model organism' as it is under discussion within science and technology studies and as an ironic descriptor for our own interest in Lucy as an entity/project through which to illuminate figurations within robotics more widely. Primate and robot together are forms of natureculture that help to clarify how the categories of animal and machine are entangled, while making explicit investments in their differences from one another, and from the third category of the human. We conclude, again following Haraway, by imagining what other possibilities there might be for figuring humans, robots, and their relations if we escape the reiterative imaginary of the robot as proxy for becoming human.

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Authors & Contributors
Eller, Andrea R.
Canington, Stephanie L.
Tim Taylor
Sholts, Sabrina B.
Dorin, Alan
Matthew O’Lemmon
Concepts
Automata; robotics; cyborgs
Artificial intelligence
Artificial life
Technology and culture
Human-animal relationships
Primates
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
Early modern
Ancient
19th century
Places
Japan
Europe
Roman Empire
Greece
China
India
Institutions
Smithsonian National Zoological Park (Smithsonian National Zoo)
Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute
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