Publications | ilyavidrin

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Ilya Vidrin

Recent Outputs

"Thresholds of Resistance"

Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Blackwood Gallery)

Robot Trust Fall

"Falling Robots and The Absurdity of Human Trust"

Psyche Magazine

Trust between humans relies on a frail and strange notion of shared experience, absurdity and vulnerability. Indeed, it’s surprisingly difficult to articulate exactly what trust is. One way of demonstrating that difficulty is to see if trust can be simulated – by robots. Attempting to turn trust into a strictly rational process demonstrates how hard it is to say just what’s going on when one person trusts another. So what happens when we ask ourselves and others to trust – or not trust – a machine, particularly one with some level of autonomy? What’s necessary for a robot to do a trust fall?

Pillow Voices 2022

"Dancerly Creativity and Technological Innovation"

Jacob's Pillow Podcast

Hosted by Jacob's Pillow Associate Archivist Patsy Gay, this episode explores the intersection of dance and technology, diving into both history and current practice. Through the voices and perspectives of Marjani Forté-Saunders, Sydney Skybetter, Brian Brooks, Lily Baldwin, and Ilya Vidrin, we hear how technology can both hinder and enforce a dancer's embodied awareness.

Vidrin "Attunement" New Museum

"Distinguishing Trust and Care in Dance"

Dance Magazine

“Trust” and “care” are two concepts that frequently come up in conversations about partnering. Yet, when asked to articulate the difference, language often falls short. On the surface, there is a tendency to believe that what we say shouldn’t matter as much as how we express care and trust through action. But time and again, I’ve seen that how we conceive of these two concepts affects what actually plays out in practice.

Peer-Reviewed and Invited Publications

Beyond Verbal: Conceptualizing Energy Expenditure in Physical Interaction. Frontiers in Robotics and A.I. (forthcoming)

"More or Less: A Queer Inquiry on Partnering". Queering Partner Dance, Routledge (forthcoming).

"Tender Robotics". Robot Theatre, Routledge (forthcoming).

Responsible Knowing in Partnering. Performance Philosophy (2024).

Conceptualizing Care in Partnering. Performance Research (2023).

Project Site: A Guide to Responsive Placemaking. Northeastern University (2022).

Choreographing the Personal: A Profile of Jessica Roseman. Boston Art Review (2021).

Can a Robot Do a Trust Fall?: Absurdity as a Component of Human Intelligence and Embodiment. Creative Computing (2020)

Embodied Ethics: The Conditions and Norms of Communication in Partnering. Thinking Touch Edited Volume (2020).

Partnering as Rhetoric. A World of Muscle, Bone & Organs: Research and Scholarship in Dance (2018).

Priming Haptic Values with Wearable Tech. Partnering Lab (2020).

Beyond Imitation: Generative and Variational Choreography via Machine Learning. arXiv:1907.05297 (2019).

Choreographic and Somatic Approaches for the Development of Expressive Robotic Systems. Arts (Vol. 7, No. 2, p. 11) (2018)

Quantifying Coordination. Motion and Computing (2018).

Action–effect congruence during observational learning leads to faster action sequence learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68(11), pp.2200-2215 (2015).

Recent Presentations

Choreographic Design, Keynote @ Design Research Society (2024)

Feeling Beyond Touch, Panel Discussion, New Museum (2022).

Science and Art of Movement. Iowa PBS (2021).

(Not) Dancing On My Own. New Museum (2021).

Invited Presenter "Normative Problems in Partnering" at Responsive Bodies Symposium (Berlin) (2021).

Attunement: Or That Which Cannot Be Measured. by Harvard ArtLab and New Museum (NYC) -- (2020 - postponed).

"Dance and Empathy", Branches of the Same Tree Symposium. American Academy of Arts and Sciences, October 25th, (2019).

The Art and Science of Partnering. Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, July 22-28, 2019.

“Care, Dialogue, and Wearable Tech”. (Re)Patterning Performance, Center for Performance Research, June 7-9, 2019 (New York City).

"Wearables and Partnering". Conference for Research in Choreographic Interfaces (Brown University), February 22, 2019.

TEDx Providence, October 13, 2018.

Selected Press
"What do we mean when we talk about meaning?" Northeastern Global News (2024).

"Fun Things to Do in New York City in September (Dance)" New York Times (2022).

"5 Scientific Steps That Will Make You a Better Dancer". Mental Floss (2019).

"The Ethics of Dancing". Albany Union Times (2019)

"Sliding Across the MFA Floors". Music Intelligencer (2017).

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