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I. INTRODUCTION:
Robotic theater, as much as any other modern artform, has the potential to be an analogy for the technologizing of human work, and the humanizing of
technology. There is a veritable renaissance of electro-mechanical performance in our times, but there has been no institutional setting for research and laboratory theatrical productions involving this new artform. Thus, the Center for Robotic and Synthetic Performance, at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. The CRSP is a vehicle for the creation of new technologies, performance languages, and engineering visions which interface science and technology with the primal effort to understand the human condition through the arts.
CMU is an ideal place for the advent of the Center for Robotic and Synthetic Performance because it has a well-deserved international reputation for
engineering, theater, art, and music, and a history of involvement in the cross-fertilization of art, computer animation and robotics.
II. THE VISION:
Robotic researchers, artists, theater groups, virtual reality artists, composers and others will come from around the world to do cutting edge
engineering, make robotic theater, and create projects that further new multimedia and experimental performance techniques and technologies at the
Center for Robotic and Synthetic Performance. The multidisciplinary practice already common in the Robotics Institute will be extended to include
artists, musicians, and theater people.
The centerpiece of the CRSP will be a "smart" theater, a space whose structural elements are virtual-reality integrated with numerous built-in
electromechanical systems. This theatrical laboratory environment will extend concepts of artificial architectural intelligence. It will have numerous built in performance-enhancing sensors and the capability of integrating virtual reality sets, and be capable of exploring other strategies allowing robotic and human actors to interact with and within a three-dimensional, architectural-scale, digitally-imaged and/or roboticized space. Performances will be developed that reach a new level of immersion into imaginative realms, with the audience included in interactive modes with robotic actualizations of the most incredible visions. A computer-controlled performance brain, a new level of 'show-control' capable of artificial intelligence strategems, will be one focus of research efforts.
The troupe of robot performers that the CRSP is developing are synthetic actors capable of expanding the performance vocabulary of humans in the same way that music synthesizers expanded the language of sound for the electronic composer in the past three decades. The artist-scientist
collaborative teams at the CRSP will unite the best of both worlds, extinguishing the art/science duality that has plagued culture since the days of Leonardo. The performances and the interactive processes create the potential for positive social impact. The struggle to join art and technology is a metaphor for the immense effort needed to create a more equalitarian, multi-racial, and multi-economic society.
The educational initiative component of the CRSP will be an ongoing effort to interface with the CMU College of Fine Arts' Music and Theater Departments, the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, the Entertainment Technology Center, and the Robotics Institute to sponsor appropriate courses for teaching the artistic and technical skills relevant to robotic performance and artmaking. This effort will include proposals for graduate and undergraduate classes at CMU as well as high school level courses through the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute REL (Robotics Education Laboratory). Another component of our educational goal is the bringing of these unique dimensions of technology, theater and art to the disadvantaged and low-income communities of Pittsburgh, including (but not limited to) the urban poor, the physically challenged, and the developmentally disabled.
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![[CRP image]](/images/centers/crp.jpg)
