Machine performers: Neither agentic nor automatic

Abstract

Machine performers could constitute an investigation of cultural codes of the theatre audience in order to look at a broader understanding of the machine itself. This paper investigates the perception of the robotic agent in the following four areas: the historical lineage of the uncanny valley, artificial intelligence (AI), anthropomorphism, causality and animacy. These four areas will be looked upon from the perspective of “body versus action” in an alternate way than science.