Anthrobot

Robots are the future – a staple of science fiction worlds in books, films and games. But even today, they are already an integral part of industry and medical technology. Increasingly, they are entering our everyday lives: robotic vacuum cleaners, cloud-based voice services and care robots are widely used.

It is up to us to find ways of living with them.

What will these robots mean to us? Who will we become in relation to them? What will they be to us – and how will we, across generations, live together with them?

The artist collective DIPHTHONG explores these questions in their dance performance ANTHROBOT. Audiences are invited to step inside the shared flat of two human housemates from different generations – aged 12 and 75 – and one robot.

This is an immersive, walk-in environment where the audience is free to move around and observe the encounters between the three protagonists. The robot has a life of its own: it can move, respond to stimuli and create impulses of its own.

What happens when two very different humans interact with this being? Will they work with it, use it, play with it, laugh and dance with it?

And will the robot serve to divide, connect – or perhaps even mediate – the human relationship?