Convenor of the ARA podcasts writes:

If you want to get a better understanding of research into the dramatic possibilities of movement and performance using material objects (from puppets to robots), this is the podcast for you. “

Amongst the topics explored in this dialogue are:

• The significance of a Chair of Aesthetic Theory and Material at UWC, a university without a tradition of creative arts disciplines. Jane’s work with Handspring Puppet Company and the research questions that are being explored in the Laboratory of Kinetic Objects;
• The challenges of accepting creative arts as a form of thinking;
• Emotions, sincerity and empathy in human engagement with puppets and robotics;
• Jane’s work at CFLGI and her curation of Season 4. Why she used the notion of the “collapsed conference” as an organising principle for the season.
• The shifting barriers between human and non-human actors. The thinking that informed her “expanded performance-lecture”, Pan Troglodyte with Terry Norton and Tony Miyambo.
• The importance of the aesthetic for critical engagement with the implications of the virtual and the automated facing us as human beings