May I Draw Your Attention? Initial Lessons From the Large-Scale Generative Mark Maker

Abstract

Everyday robots are emerging in contexts from household chores to entertainment, and an accompanying need arises to understand perceptions of these systems. We propose a sleek 2D hanging pen plotter as a useful tool for both furthering art and studying human responses to ambient everyday robots. Aspects of this system and the pieces it produced were grounded in ideas from conceptual and generative art. We installed our robotic system in three different spaces in the wild, recorded video footage of the installations, consulted with expert artists, and interviewed a subset of exhibit visitors. Key findings included visitor assumptions of robot responsiveness and differences in user behaviors between performing arts and engineering environments. The exploratory products of this work can benefit artists who employ generative concepts in their work, as well as roboticists who seek further understanding of human-robot interaction in the wild.