A history of robot camp: performing beyond the uncanny valley, from early twentieth-century automata to contemporary science fiction theatre

Abstract

In this work, I intervene in discussions of robot performance, pointing to a history of a performance mode I classify as ‘robot camp’ that, in offering techniques that overcome potential affective repulsion to these near-human machines, shifted the trajectory of the relationship between humans and robots. I first invoke ideas of theatre artists Edward Gordon Craig and Oriza Hirata, along with theatre scholar Louise LePage’s reinterpretation of Judith Butler’s ‘performativity’, in order to offer a consideration of the robot as a performer. This leads to a reframing of Steve Dixon’s ‘metallic camp’ in conversation with Masahiro Mori’s concept of the uncanny valley (and through a return to Susan Sontag’s foundational ‘Notes on “Camp”’), through which I theorize the performance strategy of robot camp. I trace robot camp throughout the history of performative robot portrayals, primarily early twentieth-century automaton exhibitions and Elizabeth Meriwether’s contemporary science fiction play Heddatron, foregrounding how techniques of robot camp have been successfully employed to overcome affective uneasiness toward the robot (i.e., manifestations of the uncanny valley); in doing so, I highlight how live theatre has shaped public engagements with and imaginings of the robot from its early origins.