In order to organize the different projects within the catalogue, we have created a taxonomy with relevant categories and sub-categories.
Below you can find their definitions.
Performance Type
Dance
A performance that sets up the fiction of a character—embodied and imitated by an actor—against the friction of a dancer whose value lies in the ability to kindle the imagination through technical prowess, athletic performance and kinesthesis. The focus is on the movement of a body that stands in relation to sound, or lights.
Installation Art
Works of installation art are spatial environments meant to be experienced from within. The specificity of these works is that the region of space where the objects are collocated is integral to the display of the works and that the spectator is in some way regarded as integral to the completion of the work.
Musical
A contemporary form of theatre that brings together text, music, and visual staging without integrating them, merging them, or reducing them to a common denominator (as in Opera) and without distancing them from one another.
Performance Art
This form of performance usually does not take place in the theatre but in the museum. The accent is on the ephemeral and unfinished nature of the production rather than a completed work of art. The artform relies upon the physical presence of the artist who has a direct relationship with the objects and situation of enunciation.
Puppetry
Inanimate objects are manipulated to make them look animate. Usually such effect is achieved by making them move in a way that resembles human (or animal) movements. While strictly speaking this category is about objects taking the place of actors on stage, so about puppets-as-humans, it can also be considered more broadly about human-as-puppets and the dramturg/director being able to have complete control over the actors.
Text-based
A form of theatre that revolves around a dramatic text within a single dramatic universe. When a text is uttered on stage, it is read within a framework that vests its fictionality and differentiates it from “ordinary” texts. Reading this text needs to be done within a shared universe of discourse, taking in account the cultural, historical and ideological context, so as to approach it within a formal vacuum
Public Engagement
Active
Performances where the actions or decisions of the spectators influence, shape, or complete the work. The participation of the spectator is necessary for the unfolding or happening of the performance.
Passive
Performances where the spectator remains an observant, not affecting the course or structure of the work. Spectators might empathize, reflect, or interpret the work, yet their engagement does not alter the performance itself.
Theme
Aesthetics
When an element of the mis-en-scène stresses a purely aesthetic dimension/ seeks formal beauty, it is seen as aesthetic. Seeking formal beauty, the performance is mainly a matter of aesthetics. Usually more common in relation to installations.
Agency
Machines become agents on the stage. The performances under this theme can question who is in control: the man or the machine?
Anthropomorphism
The performance is about attributing human characteristics or behavior to the robots.
Capitalism
The performance questions dynamics of produce-consume-dispose and other capitalism-related matters.
Cyborg
The performance is about human-machine merging/extending one another.
Education
The performance used to educate children or young adults about a subject.
Empathy
The performance creates a space for identification with the viewer, so that the viewer might imagine themselves as the character on stage, and sense what they envision the performer is sensing. This creates affective/kinesthetic engagement between spectator and performer.
Futures
The performance explores possible futures.
Horror
The performance inspires intense feelings of fear, shock, or disgust.
Isolation/Community
The performance explores themes around either being isolated or part of a community.
Labour
The performance reflects on labour dynamics. It not necessarily about capitalism but more broad, as it can be about how we tend to view machines as task performers.
Obsolescence
Reflects on how machines can fastly become outdated and undesired, thrown away.
Sensuality
Performances that evoke enjoyment, expression, or pursuit of physical and sensory pleasure, often linked to desire or eroticism. Such sensuality can also lead to aversion and disgust, as when robots mirror organic forms in ‘unnatural’ ways.
Relationship
Co-existence
Humans and machines are in the same environment and share the same space. This can evolve in a relationship of co-dependence where the two on each other to survive or each other’s existence has some major effect on the other one.
Companion
More than co-existence, a social relationship (such as friendship) is present.
Independence
The robot does not rely on humans to exist or perform.
Power Dynamics: Robots as Master
Robots exert power over humans, giving robots the agency in the relationship.
Power Dynamics: Robot as Servant
Humans exert power over robots, giving no agency to robots and making them servants.
Voyeurism
The relationship is based on the human’s pleasure of observing the robot’s actions without the robot knowing it. The spectator gazes upon machines as objects of fascination or desire, without reciprocal awareness.
Robot Role
Bodily Extension
Robots add to or expand the human body. They can be prosthetic robots, but within these category also lie occasions where the body and the technology merge, expand, or modify one another creating a cyborg entity as a result.
Character Performer
Robots that are given a context-specific role and are thereby characterized by the artist. To characterize the robot, the artist has provided the spectator with the means of seeing and /imagining the dramatic world the robot lives and performs in.
Dancer
A motion performing robot that moves either on a set choreography or on the basis of improvisation, but always in relation to some sort of music or sound, or light that feels like sound.
Director
The robot is in charge of the performance and how it unfolds. Here, the robot can have the aesthetic and organizational responsibility for the production, it can interpret the text, direct the characters, or use the available stage potential.
Motion Performer
A robot that moves but which movements are independent and do not stand in relation to music or sound (it is, therefore, not a dancer).
Prop
The robot does not act as a primary performer, the story is not about the robot, but the robot functions as an object or tool within the performance. The artist can be interacting with or controlling the machine.
Sound Performer
The robot just performs sounds.
Robot Appearance
Artifact-Inspired
The robot appearance is inspired by an object or an apparatus.
Bio-inspired
The robot is inspired by a living organism and can be further categorized as:
Anthropomorphic: human-form inspired, a human stick is also considered part of this category.
Botanomorphic: plant inspired.
Zoomorphic: animal inspired.
Functional
The robot appearance cannot be related to pre-existing entities. It is realized to perform a specific task. This is the case for robotic arms.
Geometrical Shape
The robot is inspired by conventional shapes such as pyramids or cubes.