Exhibition Work, November Update

Like last month, the past few weeks have been busy for Motion/Emotion. With the opening date drawing ever closer, a lot of that work has been happening on-site, so let’s take a look.

Image: a maquette of an exhibition gallery made of white foamcore.

Two weeks ago the museum’s Executive Director and I got to see the projects comprising the ODU/Hampton Roads showcase in person. The first site we visited was SimIS, a veteran-owned company that specializes in robots for the military. While SimIS is technically a separate entity from ODU, a lot of the university’s faculty, graduates, and interns work there, so there’s a lot of crossover. Given the strong military presence in the Norfolk/Hampton Roads area, moreover, featuring military-focused robots would attract different audiences to the museum.

Warning: the robots discussed in the next three paragraphs address police violence and military firearms training.

Image: an industrial interior with workbenches and other equipment. In the center of the room is a brown, tank-like robot topped with a beige, hard plastic torso in the shape of a human male. The torso is covered in bullet holes.

The first robot we visited is one designed for recruits working on their long-distance shooting skills. The piece is essentially a tank with a human torso on it, capable of operating either through remote control or autonomously. Whenever the torso it hit, it dips down, simulating a body collapsing. To better simulate battle conditions, the robot is usually wearing camo or other forms of clothing to mimic soldiers, but for our exhibition, we’re choosing to leave the torso bare, leaving the bullet holes and other indexical marks of its use visible to viewers. We’re also opting to leave the machinery out of the robot, both to assuage viewers concerned it might turn on, and to reduce its 700-lb weight to something more manageable in terms of movement and display.

Image: an industrial space with tables and other equipment. In the center is a robot shaped like a human male mannequin wearing a black shirt, bullet vest, and ballcap. A tablet with an image of a white, male face is attached to the center of the mannequin’s head.

The second robot is a prototype for a police de-escalating trainer. The AI inside the robot responds to both the words and the tone the police officer uses when talking to it, resulting in more or less confrontational responses depending on the input it receives. The robot has also been programmed to do involuntary movements such as blinking its eyes, twitching its hands, and other motions in addition to deliberate emotional expressions and vocalizations. Right now the face consists of a tablet affixed to a mannequin head, but the designers are currently working on a version where the face curves around the head to better simulate a human appearance. The robot can also be programmed to have different faces reflecting various races, genders, and other identities.

As I mentioned in last month’s post, these two examples in particular raise a lot of ethical questions regarding the role of robots in emotional work. Whereas the first robot is designed to help people learn how to kill efficiently, the second one is attempting to avert violence by cultivating empathy. But as one of our advisory board members, who has been helping me think through these pieces, argues, it’s important to remember the stakeholders for these works, and whose expertise gets represented. When designing the military robot, for instance, did the designers talk to veterans, and if they did, did they focus on specific ranks? Did they talk to veterans with PTSD to address trauma? In the case of the police robot, who served on the research committee? Did the designers talk to police officers, former arrestees, or someone else? In terms of police training, are officers taught about different emotional responses, and how averting the gaze or speaking with a particular tone could indicate neurological or emotional difference rather than guilt or disrespect? One important task for me as I prepare to write about these works is to find out who beyond the designers at SimIS was involved in the research for these robots, as that will help determine whose perspective is getting represented.

If you skipped the section on military training and police violence, resume reading here.

The idea of representation and the importance of including all parties is a key part of the third robot we visited, a collaboration between ODU’s Virginia Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Center, or VMASC, and the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters (CDHC). The project is a mobile robot capable of visiting different hospital rooms and enabling patients to interface with their fellow patient friends. Known as “David’s Project,” the piece is based on Tina Gustin’s work with former CHKD patient David Carey, who wanted to visit with his friends while undergoing treatment (sadly, he has since passed away). While VMASC is redesigning the prototype, students have actively informed its design. Since the robot is geared especially for children in hospitals, VMASC and CHKD asked students from the Governor’s School for the Arts to draw their idea of what a friendly robot would look like. They are currently in the process of synthesizing these drawings into a new design. While we were able to see some 3D-printed prototypes for scale, the actual robot itself is still very much under construction. Essentially, this design is so new that we won’t know what it will look like until we install it. Mystery aside, it’s exciting to see a project where the most important stakeholders, the children themselves, get represented in the actual design stage.

Image: section of a foamcore maquette of an exhibition gallery, photographed from above.

In addition to on-site object visits, I’ve also been working at the museum as we move into the design stage of the exhibition. On Friday, I spent the day in Norfolk helping out at the museum. While part of this work included taking photographs of the reassembly process for one of Elizabeth King’s works, which is being stored in the museum’s vault until installation time, my main task was to work on the exhibition layout and select potential colors for the text vinyl. For the layout work, I’m using a foamcore maquette scaled to the proportions of the actual gallery to try out different configurations. In keeping with the collaborative nature of the show, the Executive Director set up a preliminary layout based on previous sketches and conversations we’d had, which I’ve been fine-tuning and changing as I get a better sense of the space.

Work on the layout ongoing, but it’s exciting to see the physical aspects of my research start to materialize into more tactile form. It’s also nice to be able to work with a 3D model because I can get an immediate sense of the space. In Roswell, I primarily worked out my layouts through drawings made on gallery maps, which was always an approximation at best because I was working in a 2D format (to be fair to the Roswell Museum, I’m pretty sure there were gallery maquettes at one point, but they probably got lost or destroyed and were never replaced. I think they have 3D software now, but they didn’t buy that until after I left). While this method is fine for 2D works such as prints or drawings, this exhibition consists primarily of 3D objects, so it’s important to be thinking in three dimensions.

In short, there’s a lot going on right now, and it will only get busier as we head into the installation season in January. Next week, I’ll be starting my next big task: writing the actual labels and exhibit text. While I’ve got plenty of notes to guide me, it’s time to take those ideas and put them into fully written form.

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