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Jamie Wallace is Associate Professor in 'Materiality and Design Anthropology' at the Department of Education, Aarhus University.

He has a background as industrial designer and fine artist. His broad research focus involves technologies and how they are related to practices of design, use and making.

Abstract
It is perhaps no surprise that the term 'robot' and the term 'industrial design' first occur within 2 years of each other. Robots as a social-cultural practice are imagined and made meaningful through the unfolding actions of robot designers and technicians. These remain closely linked with the performance characteristics of the materials, tools and techniques of industrial design which establishes their evolving symbolic and utilitarian correlation.

This presentation considers the material practice of robot making by exploring robots through the tradition of ceramics as a comparison to industrial design. Can alternative transformative processes involving notions such as sensuous and expressive making or skilled craftsmanship provide robots with other symbolic associations?  Is a human otherness achievable through a physical presence of making and how do robots remain objects of human production given the layers of technological instrumentality involved in their making?

Link
Jamie Wallace

[image source: Jamie Wallace, Estate Erich Consemüller]
[source: Vive Les Robots!]