Cybernetic Marionette: Channeling Collective Agency Through a Wearable Robot in a Live Dancer-Robot Duet
Anup Sathya, Jiasheng Li, Zeyu Yan, Adriane Fang, Bill Kules, Jonathan David Martin, Huaishu Peng

TL;DR
This paper presents DANCE^2, an interactive dance performance where audiences influence a wearable robot dancer through voting, revealing insights into collective agency, interaction design, and perceptions of influence in live digital art.
Contribution
It introduces a novel live performance framework enabling audience-driven control of a wearable robot dancer, exploring collective agency and interaction dynamics.
Findings
Audience felt their choices influenced the performance
Voting patterns were consistent across performances
Tension exists between perceived and actual agency
Abstract
We describe DANCE^2, an interactive dance performance in which audience members channel their collective agency into a dancer-robot duet by voting on the behavior of a wearable robot affixed to the dancer's body. At key moments during the performance, the audience is invited to either continue the choreography or override it, shaping the unfolding interaction through real-time collective input. While post-performance surveys revealed that participants felt their choices meaningfully influenced the performance, voting data across four public performances exhibited strikingly consistent patterns. This tension between what audience members do, what they feel, and what actually changes highlights a complex interplay between agentive behavior, the experience of agency, and power. We reflect on how choreography, interaction design, and the structure of the performance mediate this…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
