Thinking Beyond the Human: Design Approaches for Robots and AI in Opera

Opera has historically been a site for developing new and emerging technologies. More recently, opera has proven a rich environment for investigating future scenarios involving human-robot interaction and exploring the potential of robot performers. The explosion of enthusiasm for AI and the ubiquity of machine learning tools have created numerous possibilities for generating creative content in music, poetry, images, and choreography. This article outlines efforts to explore the creative possibilities of robots and AI through a dedicated workshop with researchers from diverse fields. Our goal is to begin thinking beyond the human to investigate what robot performers might look and behave like when designed from a relational rather than a representational approach. We provide a brief history of robots on stage, including the authors’ prior work developing original performances featuring robots and human performers. We describe our iterative design approach and low- fi prototypes, summarizing key insights from the workshop. Finally, we analyze the workshop outcomes and consider the trade-offs of working with existing robots and the possibilities for working with open, configurable systems.