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Robots Debut In Japanese Theater Production
An anonymous reader writes "BBC News and CNET Cutting Edge are reporting on a new play starring at Osaka University, in which two Mitsubishi Wakamaru robots interact with human actors and move around the stage. Named 'Hataraku Watashi' ('I, Worker'), the play is authored by Oriza Hirata, a renowned playwright. It focuses on a robot who complains about his boring and demeaning jobs."
... like acting?
Two Rules For Success:
1) Never tell people everything you know.
to see Shatner can still find work.
Art imitates ... Art.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I was all of history's great robot actors - Acting Unit 0.8; Thespomat; David Duchovny!
But does it have the production value of the singing bears at Chuck-ee Cheese? I am glad to see the Japanese are catching up, though. (I jest. I jest!!)
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Anyone looking forward to the day that robots become better at acting than humans can ever be? Don't need their own stunt doubles, can be actually destroyed on camera after showing something that passes for human emotion, will work for whatever salary they're programmed for... Think people will care that they're not real?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darfsteller
As good a read now as it was in 1955.
I am officially gone from
Marvin the android is part of a comedy series, but if you want to see real tragedy, see the droids in the Star Wars Universe.
They are self-aware, capable of reasoning and emotion, and yet they are all slaves and no one pays more than cursory attention to them. ...maybe its because they don't rip people's arms out of their sockets when they lose at chess
No sig for the moment.
It focuses on a robot who complains about his boring and demeaning jobs.
So it's about Marvin?
"Humor is tragedy plus time" - Mark Twain
And no, I don't know where I'm going with this.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This is really just the same thing as using a puppet, except more expensive.
Of course, people say the same thing about Keanu Reeves...
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Everyone walked out. They hated it. I've seen plagues that had better opening nights than this. You said that Oscar was practically on my mantle.
It's made to utilize gravity in a very efficient way for just such a problem.
That was a terrible post. I'll be sure to come back and re-read it in a few hours.
That always struck me as horrible about the droids as well. I was always surprised more people weren't bothered by it. They're constantly being killed, and nobody even cares.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Agreed! Personally, I value droid "life" more than I would Jar-Jar's.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Ever see "Victor, Victoria", where the title character (Julie Andrews) got rave reviews as a female impersonator because she actually _was_ a woman pretending to be a man? How long before some robot actor gets lauded for being "so lifelike, just like a human", and then we discover that it's really a human actor inside a robot suit? Weren't there actually people inside CP30 and R2D2 (at least in some shots)?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Of course since we get the word robot from Karel Capek's 1921 play where the robots were the serf labors, it isn't that far of a stretch for the new production: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R._(Rossum's_Universal_Robots)
Marvin the android is part of a comedy series, but if you want to see real tragedy, see the droids in the Star Wars Universe.
They are self-aware, capable of reasoning and emotion, and yet they are all slaves and no one pays more than cursory attention to them. ...maybe its because they don't rip people's arms out of their sockets when they lose at chess
More to the point, it sounds like droids tend to develop personalities over time, growing and adapting beyond the standard unit they were when they rolled off the assembly line. The solution? Get the memory banks wiped. Essentially lobotomizing a sentient being so that it returns to being a docile slave.
I guess what makes this more tricky in the Star Wars universe is that slaves in our world are human, always have been and always will be. There's a huge distinction between them and service animals -- we look down on people who work a horse to death but it's not held to the same criminal standard as slavery and working a person to death. My dad, being a mechanic, looks at abused machines with the same sense of pain as an animal lover looks at a whipped horse. When talking about the machines in Star Wars, you're talking a spectrum ranging from unthinking machines no smarter than one of our cars all the way up to super-human intelligence and everything in between.
Of course, this brings us back to the old, often-repeated story lines. Slave rebellions were one of the old standbys and a robot rebellion is just gussying up the same old story with rocket ships and ray guns. Funny to think how many scifi story lines have that same premise, everything from Terminator to Matrix to the Butlerian Jihad in Dune.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Robots performing Japanese theater? It's been done before... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa-Kx5M-8Ak