The blurring of humanity and robotics

The ideas that really struck me and made me think in regards to this weeks reading were that of; humanity and robotics almost blurring into one another. Rhi, in her blog, discusses R.U.R and says that the robots in the play are too human-like, to the point where it is difficult to distinguish between humans and robots. I thought this was really interesting when reading the article, ‘On the Marionette theatre’ – when he talks about the puppets dancing. I thought this was interesting because in the article he says that: Herr C- ‘assured him that the pantomime of these puppets gave him great pleasure, and emphatically remarked that a dancer who wished to develop himself could learn a number of things from them.’ I find this quite ironic because I have always thought of automaton to be representing humans and how they move, think act – and for Herr C to say that a dancer should take influence from the puppets seems almost a reversal of ideas. Does this then constitute simulacrum and the copying and copying of images?

I’m not sure if I am using ‘uncanny’ in the correct way when i say this, however; I think that it is uncanny how it appears that humans and automatons are so reliant on each other and quite fundamentally similar in some cases however, in the real world, today’s world, most people wouldn’t think of humans as automaton – and as said in a previous class it could be seen as an insult to describe someone as a ‘machine’. A nice example of automata and humans being reliant on each other from the play, is when Alquist is trying to recreate the human formulae but all of the human’s have been wiped out and so will the world survive on the existing robots with no building of new robots?

The confusion and uncertainty that we sometimes hold about an object being real or an illusion is fascinating and made me think of ‘War Horse’ that I went to see a few months ago (which Lizzie has already mentioned!). War Horse is a production about the horses that died in the war, and primarily a puppet and physical show. The puppets that were used in the show were so lifelike and incredibly enchanting to watch, so much so, that I forgot that they were puppets. I think the reason that the horse puppets were so engaging to watch was because their movements were very rhythmic and natural; this was obviously controlled by a human – so why did i lose ability (for a short amount of time) to recognise that it was only a puppet? How does the representation of the real have the power to suspend disbelief?

 Abiex

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