This week at University of Glasgow, the Immersive Experiences Lab is hosting practitioner-research and performance maker Yaron Shyldkrot.
‘Misbehaving Machines: Performing Robots and AI Narratives’ (James Arnott Theatre, Gilmorehill Centre)
This talk explores how contemporary performance and digital practices unsettle dominant imaginaries of robots and artificial intelligence. As these technologies advance rapidly, common representations continue to blur the boundaries between science and fiction. Despite their cultural saturation, AI and robotic systems are still largely framed as either compliant tools or looming threats. These figures are shaped by persistent anthropomorphic fantasies and economies of speculative fear. In response, Shyldkrot foregrounds moments of malfunction, error, and unpredictability. Such “misbehaviours” are approached as productive glitches that disrupt the fantasies driving AI development and media hype. The talk probes some of these enduring myths by examining how recent theatre and digital performance, sound art, and screen-based works mobilise portrayals of robots and AI, resisting familiar depictions in order to foster alternative understandings of technological projects.
Please book your place for the research seminar here.
Yaron Shyldkrot is a practitioner-researcher and performance maker. His research and artistic practice explore the blurred boundaries between the natural and the artificial, relations with technology and with one another, and the thresholds of sound and vision. He is a Lecturer in Scenography and Design-Led Performance and Programme Leader for the MA Performance Design at the University of Leeds. He was co-convenor of the Intermediality in Theatre and Performance Research Working Group at IFTR (2021–2025) and his monograph Misbehaving Machines is forthcoming with Bloomsbury