Imagine a version of R.U.R. where all the roles in the play were performed by LEGO MINDSTORMS robots that were built and programmed by school kids from a village in the outskirts of Czechia. This scenario became reality in 2015, around a century after Karel Čapek wrote the script for the famous sci-fi theatre play R.U.R. that gave birth to the notion “Robot” in 1920/1921.

In this talk we will follow the development of The R.U.R.-play from the time when the idea was born in 2011 until it was premiered in 2015, and later was performed at the American Center in Prague and at the Swedish Science Festival in Gothenburg the year after.

Bio

Christian Gjørret created the robot marketing agency “Vive Les Robots!” in 2006 in Copenhagen, Denmark, which primary focus was to promote robots for the public. In 2011 the idea for robot performance festival “Café Neu Romance” was born and the year after it was implemented for the first time in collaboration with the Gallery of the National Technical Library in Prague, Czechia. The following two years the festival was under auspices of the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade, and from 2014-2016, where the last edition of the festival was held, the Institute of Intermedia at the Czech Technical University was also a co-organizer of the festival. The festival, which existed from 2012-2016 had good media attention. Since 2017, the year when “Vive Les Robots!” closed, Christian Gjørret has established his own “Gallery Tour the Stairs” in Warsaw, where visitors in Warsaw, Poland, can hear the Story of “Café Neu Romance”. By the end of 2024, Norticum, the new robot event marketing project of Gjørret will see the daylight.