'Ballet Numerique 2005'
Work made by Josien Niebuur in cooperation with Pavlov Medialab.

My work is about the fact that our lives are entwined with technology, and we cannot do without it. Our thoughts and actions are often influenced by our relationship with technology. In our society new technological developments are followed up fast, and more and more often form an important control factor that dictates us how to communicate, think, live, etc. In my work I research the ‘cutting surface’ of technology and other social developments.

'Ballet Numerique 2005' is a danceperformance in which five different robots play the leading part in a dance performance. The robots have an industrial character and have been used in production processes in (different) factories and institutes. Try outs will be presented in the Puddingfabriek, in May 2005. The premiere will be at the Pavlov Pocket Festival in December 2005. This performance will go on tour and will be performed in several places in The Netherlands. After having talked everything through with Pavlov Medialab, (who offer space and expertise to guest artist), I submitted a proposal that was positively received. Pavlov Medialab will offer productional support, will share knowledge and lend out equipment.

The spectator will see a 20 minute long dance performance in which the choreography and music are performed by 5 industrial robots. One sees a struggle about ‘being in control’ and the ‘loss’ or ‘liberation’ of this.

Most of the time people project human properties onto the technological environment.
It's as though we have a deep-seated wish to understand machines, computers and robots within a human context. We live in a world in which we are surrounded by 'machines made for perfection’. In our world clever machines form a control factor that can take over our decisions and our problem solving. The essential function of a machine is that it can perform the actions that it has been assigned to.

This dance performance researches whether the motion vocabulary of robots can be liberated from their functionality, and instead can get an aesthetic or poetic meaning. Its basic principle is the profound relationship between man and machine. Like Marshall McLuhan stated: “The wheel is the extension of the foot; technology is a magnification of our qualities”. New technologies are therefore a good representation of time. In robots, both our desires for functionality and for control reveal itself. They are goal orientated and move with great precision and with endless repetition. In the mirror of this technology people almost seem to be obsessive and compulsively addicted to action, control and security. This obsessive compulsion can be seen quite often, because it is generally experienced that we are living in a time of big changes, in which we often feel that we no longer have any perspective and have lost control. This causes anxiety and restlessness. The repetition of certain actions then becomes soothing, these so-called obsessive actions get an almost magical meaning through this repetition, and through this ritual we keep anxiety and restlessness under control. Therefore one could call the endless repetitive movements of the robots an obsessive compulsive neurosis.

These themes will be used in the choreography; it is inspired by the (motional-) characteristics of this neurosis and by the motional vocabulary of the robots. The robots have had a functional life; a medical precision robot of the Rijksuniversiteit in Groningen, a respiration machine form the intensive care unit of the Academisch Ziekenhuis Groningen and a ‘pick & place’ robot that functioned at the HBO Techniek in Groningen. Every robot has its own character, sound and physical appearance and characteristic identity. The music for this performance is made by the robots themselves; their characteristic sounds that are produced when they move will be used as a guideline for the composition and choreography.

By making a performance in which hidden poetic meanings are explored in the functional motional language of the robots, the relationship between man and machine is shown. What can the relationship tell us about ourselves? And which human qualities are we able to ascribe to robots? The goal is to put a broad audience in touch with art, by connecting to the present developments of technologies that speak to the imagination