Robotic Vision and Virtual Interfacings: Seeing, Sensing, Shaping

Edited by Luci Eldridge, Nina Trivedi
Published by Edinburgh University Press, 2024

How do past and present technologies affect how we perceive the world and see things?

  • Addresses the threats posed by mediated forms of seeing and processing as well as the potential for robotic visions to help reframe our human perspective and experience of the world
  • Offers a multidisciplinary approach including contributions written from art historical, design history and critical image theory perspectives through sociological insights
  • Includes several case studies including the use of social robots, robotic vision within virtual reality programmes, head-mounted displays and mapping tools such as Google Earth
  • Contributes to scholarship on robotics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality technologies from arts, media theory, and science and technology studies perspectives

As the symbiotic relationship between human and machine unfolds, robotic vision facilitates a reshaping and reconstitution of our perception of the world. This edited collection explores ways in which this is taking place and the implictions for these new ways of seeing ethically, politically, culturally and socially from an art and design perspective and through a critical theoretical lens.

The contributors converge on the intersection of New Materialism, Media Studies and Cultural Theory and offer speculative approaches combining creative writing and visual interludes from artists and designers, all of which address the question: are we on the cusp of new ways of seeing?

Contents:
Introduction: Vision Reshaped, Luci Eldridge and Nina Trivedi

Seeing

  1. When Robots Ignore Us: The Affective Impact of Robotic Artwork and Development of Drone Art, Pearl John

  2. Will Robots Daydream? Gregory Minissale

  3. Discrete Accidents of Photogrammetry: Re-presenting Pure Surface in Google Earth, Meg Rahaim

  4. Ophiux, Joey Holder

Sensing

  1. Blinking Eyes: The Embodied Registers of Military Drone Camera Footage on YouTube, Kate Fahey

  2. Embodiment and the Perception of Nonhuman Sentience in Virtual Reality Interactive Art, Nicola Plant

  3. On the Meaning of Virtual Environments and the Evolution of Life, Stephen R. Ellis

  4. Sweeping Away the Dust: Mars as Reconstructed Image, Luci Eldridge

  5. The Overview Effect, Brian Black

Shaping

  1. Robotic Presences: Encounters with Artificial Social Companionship and Embodied Representation, Bianca Westermann

  2. The Robotics Division of the Dramaco Instrument Company Introduces the Ensocellorator Reliance Pro 2, Maya Rae Oppenheimer

  3. Metalithic Postcards During the Pandemic, Ian Dawson & Paul Reilly

  4. Hi! I’m happy you’re here!, Adham Faramawy

Afterword

Concluding Perception: Seeing and Seeming, Unseeing and Unseeming in the Fog, Esther Leslie

“Sensing is the new arena in technological intervention. Robotic Vision and Virtual Interfacings offers fascinating stories and valuable perspectives on this new stage of human and technological interaction.” Marie-Luise Angerer, University of Postdam

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-robotic-vision-and-virtual-interfacings.html