- Title: GERMANY-ROBOT OPERA A robot takes to the stage at Berlin's famous Komische Oper
- Date: 21st June 2015
- Summary: CONDUCTOR ARNO WASCHK AND ROBOT CAST LOOKING ON ROBOT CONDUCTS ROBOT MYON IS TAKING APART TO THE STRAINS OF 'BRAHMS, A GERMAN REQUIEM'
- Embargoed: 6th July 2015 13:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVAFYPUS19C09Q6QXL9IJ74X91P
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: What makes a human human? Which emotions determine our being and could a machine learn those emotions? Those questions are tackled by a play at Berlin's famous Komische Oper in which a robot is the star turn.
The opera "My Square Lady" is the brainchild of the international artist collective 'Gob Squad' and revolves around the robot Myon. Apparently the idea came to life when one of the member of the artist collective saw the audience reaction to a football match played by robots, a member of the collective, Johanna Freiburg, said. She told Reuters that the people in the audience shared the thrill and saw the players not as robots but as emotional beings.
"For us, the robot is a means to look at ourselves as humans, and ask the question: what makes us a human," she said. "And what differentiates us from a machine or an object. And empathy and the ability to feel are quite crucial, I think, to do that. Looking at the robot we reflect on ourselves."
A cooperation between the artist collective and the Komische Oper were in discussion at that point, she continued, and this seemed to be a perfect project.
"Well, the opera is a professional place to create feelings," she said. "The opera tells big stories of big emotions, passion. The music evokes lots of feelings. So people who come to the opera, the opera audience, wants to have a place to live out these emotions that they don't have a place for in everyday life."
The performance artists found the perfect "subject" in Myon, a humanoid robot developed in the research laboratory Neurorobotics at the Technical College of Berlin.
The story is simple: Myon goes on a discovery tour of the opera. Opera employees from the custodian to the stage manager explain to the 1.25 metre tall machine what makes the opera special and also talk to him about whether one day he could perform as well.
Slowly Myon gets integrated in opera life and learns to conduct and sing. But even when he is able to perform or copy emotions, Myon never learns the real thing, the head of the research laboratory Neurorobotics, Manfred Hild, told Reuters. To Myon learning emotions is similar to the learning process of a toddler, said Hild: curiosity, fun to explore, and to feel something.
"Emotions decide where to go with the attention," he said. "Should the robot focus on the object or does it get boring and has there been a noise, so the robot turns to this side... And it's the emotional mechanisms which are in place and guide the process."
Before Myon gets is able to sing, the robot is taken apart by the cast to the strains of "Brahms - A German requiem", a scene that is a strong reminder of Leonardo da Vinci's painting 'The Last Supper'. It begs the question whether the machine is the Messiah or a false god of our time? The performance does not give an answer to that.
"My Square Lady" premieres in Berlin on Sunday. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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