CAT ROYALE
Blast Theory (2023)
Blast Theory’s Cat Royale photo: RULER
Would you trust a robot to care for your pet?
This video installation shows three cats - Ghostbuster, Pumpkin and Clover - living in a custom-built environment with an artificial intelligence. This is a cat utopia with cosy dens, ledges to relax, and places to climb. A robot arm offers activities to make the cats happier: throwing a ball, dangling a feather, or offering a snack. A computer vision system and human observers measure the cats’ happiness, learning about their individual preferences over time.
In a society where machines have increasing agency in our daily lives, Cat Royale explores the impact of technology on animal (and human) welfare. It asks us to consider whether we should task AI with making us happier.
Take part in an accompanying survey exploring how you feel about the use of AI for care within domestic settings. This has been designed by researcher Kate Devlin.
CREDITS
Co-commissioned by Science Gallery London and Queensland Museum for World Science Festival Brisbane 2023
Developed in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham
Supported by UKRI via the Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub
Cat environment by We Make Stuff Happen.
Blast Theory is supported using public funding from Arts Council England.
BLAST THEORY make interactive art to explore social and political questions. The group’s work places the public at the centre of unusual and sometimes unsettling experiences, to create new perspectives and open up the possibility of change. Led by Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj, the group draw on popular culture and new technologies to make performances, games, films, apps and installations. Blast Theory have shown work at the Venice Biennale, Tribeca Film Festival, ICC in Tokyo, Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, the Barbican and Tate Britain. Commissioners include Channel 4, Sundance Film Festival and the Royal Opera House. Blast Theory have been nominated for four BAFTAs and won the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica and the Nam June Paik Art Center Award.
DR KATE DEVLIN is a Reader in Artificial Intelligence & Society in the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London. Her research investigates how people interact with and react to technologies, both past and future. Kate is the author of the critically acclaimed Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots (Bloomsbury, 2018), which examines the ethical and social implications of technology and intimacy. In 2016 she ran the UK’s first sex tech hackathon. Kate is Advocacy and Engagement Director for the UKRI-funded Trusted Autonomous Systems Hub – a collaborative platform to enable the development of socially beneficial robotics and artificial intelligence systems that are both trustworthy in principle and trusted in practice. Kate is a board member of the Open Rights Group, a UK-based organisation that works to preserve digital rights and freedoms, and is a campaigner for gender equality to improve opportunities for women in tech. As a science communicator, she provides accessible accounts of robotics and AI in both broadcast and print media.