Nov 30, 2023
Sydney Skybetter sits down with choreorobotics innovator, Dr. Catie Cuan. They discuss her personal and professional trajectory, and try to answer the question: why dance with a robot?
About Catie:
An engineer, researcher, and artist, Dr. Catie Cuan is a pioneer in
the nascent field of ‘choreorobotics’ and works at the intersection
of artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, and art.
She is currently a Postdoc in Computer Science at Stanford
University. Catie recently defended her PhD in robotics via the
Mechanical Engineering department at Stanford, where she also
completed a Master’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering. The
title of her PhD thesis is “Compelling Robot Behaviors through
Supervised Learning and Choreorobotics”, which was funded by the
National Institutes of Health, Google, and Stanford University.
During her PhD, she led the first multi-robot machine learning
project at Everyday Robots (Google X) and Robotics at Google (now a
part of Google Deepmind). She has held artistic residencies at the
Smithsonian, Everyday Robots (Google X), TED, and ThoughtWorks
Arts. Catie is a prolific robot choreographer, having created works
with nearly a dozen different robots, from a massive ABB IRB 6700
industrial robot to a tabletop IDEO + Moooi robot. Catie is also a
2023 International Strategy Forum (ISF) fellow at Schmidt Futures
and the former co-founder of caali, an embodied media company.
Read the transcript, and find more resources in our
archive:
https://www.are.na/choreographicinterfaces/dwr-ep-6-irl-a-conversation-with-choreoroboticist-catie-cuan
Like, subscribe, and review here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dances-with-robots/id1715669152
What We Discuss with Catie (Timestamps):
0:00:15: Introduction to Dr. Catie Cuan
0:02:23: Catie's PhD thesis on supervised learning for compelling
robot behaviors.
0:03:19: How Catie balanced her dance career with her work in
tech.
0:05:35: The skepticism and terror of bringing dance into a STEM
environment.
0:06:20: Navigating elite STEM environments as a woman of
color.
0:07:41: The history of dance and robotics at Stanford
University
0:11:56: Contrasts between STEM and embodied practices.
0:12:44: Catie's relationship with the CRCI community.
0:13:30: The importance of artists in contemplating the meaning of
new technologies.
0:14:31: Challenges of creating a complex dance performance with
robots.
0:16:24: Lack of templates for realizing installation, performance,
and robotics research.
0:19:58: Safety considerations and rules for performing with
robots.
0:20:51: Why Boston Dynamics Spot robots and their expressive
capabilities.
0:23:32: Contemplating the ethical implications of robot
applications.
0:25:27: The future of Choreo Robotics and the importance of
imagination.
0:26:00: Dance's role in depicting a universe of creativity and
joy.
0:27:35: Choreographers are essential for successful deployment of
robots.
0:28:26: Robot dances becoming more prevalent in various
contexts.
0:30:04: Dance is essential to culture and human identity.
0:31:20: Dancing with robots is not a novel concept.
0:32:00: Show credits & thanks
The Dances with Robots Team
Host: Sydney Skybetter
Co-Host & Executive Producer: Ariane Michaud
Archivist and Web Designer: Kate Gow
Podcasting Consultant: Megan Hall
Accessibility Consultant: Laurel Lawson
Music: Kamala Sankaram
Audio Production Consultant: Jim Moses
Assistant Editor: Andrew Zukoski
Student Associate: Rishika Kartik
About CRCI
The Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI)
explores the braid of choreography, computation and surveillance
through an interdisciplinary lens. Find out more at www.choreographicinterfaces.org
Brown University's Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies' Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces thanks the Marshall Woods Lectureships Foundation of Fine Arts, the Brown Arts Institute, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for their generous support of this project.
The Brown Arts Institute and the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies are part of the Perelman Arts District.