Meet our first guest Cora Gasparotti, who will tell us about her artistic research navigating between realities in the first interview of the CHRONversations.

A dancer, choreographer and researcher who lives and creates with robots and digital doubles, she has found in new technologies an important ally, following in the footsteps of the great masters and theorists of dance. Enjoy our interview!

Let’s start with a game! Imagine being the protagonist of an RPG, fully customizable by name, appearance, goals, attitude and special abilities. Can you let us know Cora better through this double of her?

I’ve never played an RPG, but I’ll try to work with my imagination! It would probably be set in a realistic future where humans cannot accept living together with machines and avatars, the general change and the presence of new life forms. I would still be called Cora but spelt C0R4 and I would be a human raised by machines and living between the real world and the Metaverse, with a great ability to understand the customs and habits of these new inhabitants of our world and to empathize and communicate with them. The game goal would be to achieve peace through collaboration for something creative or magical! (Maybe it is more of a movie than an RPG, but I did my best!)

One area of your research posits art as a conduit between humans and robots. I was immediately reminded of a human-robot interaction design study (which you can read here) that analyzes the relationship of families who own a Roomba (the robotic vacuum cleaner) by highlighting a trend toward anthropomorphization: the Roomba can be called by its name, scolded, petted, in short, treated in the same way as a pet kitten. How do you see art coexisting with this natural human tendency to bring robots toward itself, even to the point of forming social relationships? What fascinates you about the relationship between robots and human beings?

I believe any form of affection, care or love is a great exercise in respecting others and the universe, so I support it totally and with a hopeful heart. In my vision, robots are new “life forms”, a new way of being “alive”, with assumptions and needs different from ours but equally respectable. I am fascinated by the way we can care for them, the things they can indirectly teach us about ourselves, reading between the lines, and how much they can, having different characteristics, help us in unthinkable or risky tasks. In my art this this translates into a willingness to gain new experiences or new communicative possibilities, hybridizing the body or space with the machine.

In February you inaugurated the first session of your Body Practices and New Technologies workshop (here is a video teaser)! Congratulations! Tell us a little bit about the experience. By whom and how was it received? What do you wish for future research in the art field and new technologies in Italy?

Thank you! It was incredible, there were people of all ages and professions, from actors and dancers to teachers and employees, from different regions. There were so many moments when people got excited about the explorations I was proposing, and to see the participants creating relationships with each other and getting excited about technology was intense. I never thought it would happen in the first session!

Although it was unclear to everyone what to expect from the workshop because it was something completely new and consequently difficult to imagine, I was lucky enough to have a lot of people to give me confidence and also support me, such as those who assisted me in the two days of preparation (Giacomo Spaconi, Riccardo Galdenzi, and Giangiacomo Gallo), those who took care of the photos and videos (Marco Cisamolo and Francesco Travaglia), and those who offered us the space, Binario F, a Meta space in Rome, who immediately supported the project. In addition, after the workshop, the Creative Movement Hacking family – CMH (the name of the method I am slowly building, the subject of the workshop) has expanded, and many people have decided to participate and help me improve it, each with their expertise.

“As far as research on art and new technologies in Italy is concerned, I hope that it exists to the fullest.”

There are very few places that deal with it at the academic level and in an official way, but above all, there are still many bureaucratic limitations and prejudices that keep the academic and scientific sectors separate from the AFAM sectors because multidisciplinarity is still only an “accessory word” in Italy. I am very glad that there are Digital Humanities centres, such as Casa Paganini InfoMus in Genoa (and not only!) with which I have been collaborating for a long time, that have been moving in a courageous direction for a long time, and are contributing to the development of research that effectively integrates humanities and science knowledge.

“Likewise, I am glad that more and more artistic fields are becoming interested in the possibility of opening channels of communication with the scientific world in a deep and ongoing way.”

Creating non-sporadic links between diverse fields, multidisciplinary artists and creative entities (companies, production centres, associations) will play a key role. In my small way, I try to do a lot of outreach and hope to help bring technology into the theatre, as a training and support tool for the performer and the person.

A few articles ago, here in the CHRONES. blog, we were trying to trace the origins of the Metaverse, reporting on the definitions that current big players in the field give. Would you give us your definition of the Metaverse and why you find it an area of research to invest in?

Tough to define it right now! Certainly, the Metaverse as we imagine it still does not exist: for now it is many separate platforms where you can do many interesting things. The Metaverse is a social and immersive platform where people can interact with each other and the environment and do activities, whether play or work. To date, there are many platforms, and I hope for standardization that over time will lead us to a single environment, like a big immersive WWW. However, I still see this as a distant goal.

And finally, I would like to close with another game.  If you could collaborate with another artist (living or not) in the field of new technologies, who would it be and why? What would you create together?

Uh, gosh, this is complex, more than RPGs (I guess I don’t have a talent for games ahah).  No longer in life, I have no doubt, Merce Cunningham and Rudolf Laban are my idols, everything I create, even subconsciously, originates from elements I learned by studying them, so collaborating with them would be crazy! In life, there are many artists I find interesting, I’m thinking of Alexander Whitley or Blanca Li, whom I deeply respect. Extra – dance world I would love to work with Anyma, to choreograph the virtual bodies in her concerts, and Ines Alpha, a media artist specializing in AR: I would go crazy tracking on dancers her interactive virtual body paintings.

In the photo, the performance Membrana Catartica by Cora Casparotti in collaboration with OSC Innovation.

Cora’s headshot credits: Giacomo Spaconi

Proofreading by Francesco Cecchi Aglietti