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Dances with Robots IRL: A Conversation with Catie Cuan
Sydney Skybetter sits down with choreorobotics innovator, Dr. Catie Cuan. They discuss her personal and professional trajectory, and try to answer the question: why dance with a robot?
About Catie: An engineer, researcher, and artist, Dr. Catie Cuan is a pioneer in the nascent field of ‘choreorobotics’ and works at the intersection of artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, and art. She is currently a Postdoc in Computer Science at Stanford University. Catie recently defended her PhD in robotics via the Mechanical Engineering department at Stanford, where she also completed a Master’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering. The title of her PhD thesis is “Compelling Robot Behaviors through Supervised Learning and Choreorobotics”, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Google, and Stanford University. During her PhD, she led the first multi-robot machine learning project at Everyday Robots (Google X) and Robotics at Google (now a part of Google Deepmind). She has held artistic residencies at the Smithsonian, Everyday Robots (Google X), TED, and ThoughtWorks Arts. Catie is a prolific robot choreographer, having created works with nearly a dozen different robots, from a massive ABB IRB 6700 industrial robot to a tabletop IDEO + Moooi robot. Catie is also a 2023 International Strategy Forum (ISF) fellow at Schmidt Futures and the former co-founder of caali, an embodied media company.
Read the transcript, and find more resources in our archive: https://www.are.na/choreographicinterfaces/dwr-ep-6-irl-a-conversation-with-choreoroboticist-catie-cuan
Like, subscribe, and review here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dances-with-robots/id1715669152
What We Discuss with Catie (Timestamps): 0:00:15: Introduction to Dr. Catie Cuan 0:02:23: Catie's PhD thesis on supervised learning for compelling robot behaviors. 0:03:19: How Catie balanced her dance career with her work in tech. 0:05:35: The skepticism and terror of bringing dance into a STEM environment. 0:06:20: Navigating elite STEM environments as a woman of color. 0:07:41: The history of dance and robotics at Stanford University 0:11:56: Contrasts between STEM and embodied practices. 0:12:44: Catie's relationship with the CRCI community. 0:13:30: The importance of artists in contemplating the meaning of new technologies. 0:14:31: Challenges of creating a complex dance performance with robots. 0:16:24: Lack of templates for realizing installation, performance, and robotics research. 0:19:58: Safety considerations and rules for performing with robots. 0:20:51: Why Boston Dynamics Spot robots and their expressive capabilities. 0:23:32: Contemplating the ethical implications of robot applications. 0:25:27: The future of Choreo Robotics and the importance of imagination. 0:26:00: Dance's role in depicting a universe of creativity and joy. 0:27:35: Choreographers are essential for successful deployment of robots. 0:28:26: Robot dances becoming more prevalent in various contexts. 0:30:04: Dance is essential to culture and human identity. 0:31:20: Dancing with robots is not a novel concept. 0:32:00: Show credits & thanks
The Dances with Robots Team Host: Sydney Skybetter Co-Host & Executive Producer: Ariane Michaud Archivist and Web Designer: Kate Gow Podcasting Consultant: Megan Hall Accessibility Consultant: Laurel Lawson Music: Kamala Sankaram Audio Production Consultant: Jim Moses Assistant Editor: Andrew Zukoski Student Associate: Rishika Kartik
About CRCI The Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI) explores the braid of choreography, computation and surveillance through an interdisciplinary lens. Find out more at www.choreographicinterfaces.org
Brown University's Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies' Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces thanks the Marshall Woods Lectureships Foundation of Fine Arts, the Brown Arts Institute, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for their generous support of this project.
The Brown Arts Institute and the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies are part of the Perelman Arts District.
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By CRCI
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Sydney Skybetter sits down with choreorobotics innovator, Dr. Catie Cuan. They discuss her personal and professional trajectory, and try to answer the question: why dance with a robot?
About Catie: An engineer, researcher, and artist, Dr. Catie Cuan is a pioneer in the nascent field of ‘choreorobotics’ and works at the intersection of artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, and art. She is currently a Postdoc in Computer Science at Stanford University. Catie recently defended her PhD in robotics via the Mechanical Engineering department at Stanford, where she also completed a Master’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering. The title of her PhD thesis is “Compelling Robot Behaviors through Supervised Learning and Choreorobotics”, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Google, and Stanford University. During her PhD, she led the first multi-robot machine learning project at Everyday Robots (Google X) and Robotics at Google (now a part of Google Deepmind). She has held artistic residencies at the Smithsonian, Everyday Robots (Google X), TED, and ThoughtWorks Arts. Catie is a prolific robot choreographer, having created works with nearly a dozen different robots, from a massive ABB IRB 6700 industrial robot to a tabletop IDEO + Moooi robot. Catie is also a 2023 International Strategy Forum (ISF) fellow at Schmidt Futures and the former co-founder of caali, an embodied media company.
Read the transcript, and find more resources in our archive: https://www.are.na/choreographicinterfaces/dwr-ep-6-irl-a-conversation-with-choreoroboticist-catie-cuan
Like, subscribe, and review here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dances-with-robots/id1715669152
What We Discuss with Catie (Timestamps): 0:00:15: Introduction to Dr. Catie Cuan 0:02:23: Catie's PhD thesis on supervised learning for compelling robot behaviors. 0:03:19: How Catie balanced her dance career with her work in tech. 0:05:35: The skepticism and terror of bringing dance into a STEM environment. 0:06:20: Navigating elite STEM environments as a woman of color. 0:07:41: The history of dance and robotics at Stanford University 0:11:56: Contrasts between STEM and embodied practices. 0:12:44: Catie's relationship with the CRCI community. 0:13:30: The importance of artists in contemplating the meaning of new technologies. 0:14:31: Challenges of creating a complex dance performance with robots. 0:16:24: Lack of templates for realizing installation, performance, and robotics research. 0:19:58: Safety considerations and rules for performing with robots. 0:20:51: Why Boston Dynamics Spot robots and their expressive capabilities. 0:23:32: Contemplating the ethical implications of robot applications. 0:25:27: The future of Choreo Robotics and the importance of imagination. 0:26:00: Dance's role in depicting a universe of creativity and joy. 0:27:35: Choreographers are essential for successful deployment of robots. 0:28:26: Robot dances becoming more prevalent in various contexts. 0:30:04: Dance is essential to culture and human identity. 0:31:20: Dancing with robots is not a novel concept. 0:32:00: Show credits & thanks
The Dances with Robots Team Host: Sydney Skybetter Co-Host & Executive Producer: Ariane Michaud Archivist and Web Designer: Kate Gow Podcasting Consultant: Megan Hall Accessibility Consultant: Laurel Lawson Music: Kamala Sankaram Audio Production Consultant: Jim Moses Assistant Editor: Andrew Zukoski Student Associate: Rishika Kartik
About CRCI The Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI) explores the braid of choreography, computation and surveillance through an interdisciplinary lens. Find out more at www.choreographicinterfaces.org
Brown University's Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies' Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces thanks the Marshall Woods Lectureships Foundation of Fine Arts, the Brown Arts Institute, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for their generous support of this project.
The Brown Arts Institute and the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies are part of the Perelman Arts District.