ITP Thesis Archive 2024

Abstract

With the advancement of technology, we are seeing an creasing number of automations of mundane tasks in our daily lives. For example, I have a roomba. When the roomba works well, I love it! There are no better feelings than coming home to a clean apartment. The reality, however, is that often times I come home to it either yanking cables or toppling over objects. Such failures are often followed by me not only cleaning its mess, but also redoing what it’s suppose to do manually.
When we introduce automation in our lives, we are told that that it guarantees success on every single try. The pattern that I have observed and experienced with automation is that yes, it might work perfectly for a bit, but automation inevitably fails, and human intervention is always required to clean up its failures.

I’m Tired of Cleaning Your Mess is a human robotic arm performance that explores my frustration with automation. In the performance, I highlight three different ways of how machines fail: machines realize their failures and awaits for further assistance, machines realize their failures and try to fix their own mistakes, and machines don't realize their failures and continue to function in dysfunctional manners.
In making and performing this piece, I invite my audiences to reflect on their own experiences with automation. And question whether automation has brought us more or less conveniences.

Technical Details

This performance is enabled by the MyCobot 280 Pi and its native python API developed by Elephant Robotics.