The latest piece The Robot Dog in 2042 revolves around Janelle (Kristie Nguy) from the Cantonese heritage and her partner Harry (Ari Maza Long), a person of the primary nations.
Janelle's mother Wing Lam (Jing-Xuan Chan as a ghostly appearance) has recently passed. Janelle and Harry have temporarily withdrawn to Wing Lam to finish their belongings and to expect their tragic death.
Part and package of the home is a robot dog called Dog (represented by an actual robot dog that’s shown on the stage), a therapy bot that serves for humans and a wise house interface for artificial intelligence (AI) called Hus. Hus knows an alarming amount of data in regards to the residents and tries to maintain them up up to now with their each day tasks and responsibilities.
These two technological beings are consistently in tension. Hus works to keep up timelines and productivity (and offers insane each day motivational quotes); The dog tries to know the complexity that folks experience despite its programming within the face of grief and loss.
Tiffany Garvie/MTC
Part of the Outanding Asia Topa Festival, which Melbournes has converted right into a full of life and versatile stage of telling and celebrating stories, the robot dog is included within the robot dogs.
By vehicle a family drama, the piece emphasizes the worth of embodied knowledge And how this will never get replaced by artificial intelligence and technology.
Measure values
The term robot pepper as a method for the supply of corporations and the care of those that live alone or are older people shouldn’t be only a future idea. It is a recent reality to combat an epidemic of Isolation and loneliness.
Dog represents the perfect of AI together with his goal of helping people in his life. He seems to listen and learn from people and develop his emotional repertoire. Hus, however, represents the thought of ​​AI as an omniscient and omnipresent being that exerts knowledge as power.
Both Hus and Dog are expressed by Chan in a master class performance of embodied knowledge and show how nuanced vocal characterization can create great emotions and context.
Tiffany Garvie/MTC
After the death of her mother, Janelle fights with complex emotions of anger, grief and separation. Her feeling of cultural alienation appears to be reinforced by the stays of her mother's life round her.
She is frustrated that she is unable to read the ingredients on a bag of salted cantonesian pig canteen to not read the ingredients. It is frustrated again when the true value of her mother's red cheong seed can’t be calculated by the AI ​​technology: Hus describes it as a combination of polyester and mold as an alternative of understanding the garment as a useful material representation of her mother and her history.
In order to counteract this sense of separation, Huselle Janelle encourages the microchip to make use of the “language enlargement”, which offers you a right away voice equipment in your chosen language.
After all, she does in her frustration. She can read and speak the Cantonese language immediately. But after all this approach has defects. Some forms of data can’t be passed on by the soulless automation of the AI. They exist as spiritual, tactile and embodied understanding of the identical and considerable value.
Harry also ignores many calls from his mother because she speaks in language so quickly. He is ashamed that he cannot sustain.
He experiences racial profiles at his workplace and uses language enlargement to support his application for promotion and requests the thought of ​​language acquisition as an economic profit and never as a private recovery of culture and belonging.
Overlap cultures
History moves through complex areas that navigate cultural disorientation, systemic racism, dystopian AI futures and the spirits and ancestors of our past.
At the middle of many narrative threads and concepts is a combination of two different cultures that we do rarely see in this fashion. This intersection of Cantonese and First Nations Australians will deal with the main target in a debate about it, the culture of which has packed away the claim to blue, red and white plastic “Hong Kong/Blakfula” bags within the moms of Janelle's moms.
The bags reflect the various cutting complexities of the piece and act as an emblem of cultural tensions and grief, especially when Harry tries to “tidy up” with little consideration, which may very well be vital for Janelle.
Tiffany Garvie/MTC
The robot dog is an open take a look at a possible future relationship between people and AI, which indicates that we’re unlikely that candidates can be for easy programming and can resist the subordination to the heart beat and the rhythm of the technological apparatus.
At the core of the piece there’s a proverb, a key line of text from the show, “to forget the ancestors, a stream with no source of being a tree without roots”.
Perhaps this means that we will adapt latest technological possibilities in our surroundings and adapt to latest technological possibilities, but we remain anchored in ancient wisdom that exists in places that may never reach technology.
