Decentering Human Control: A Dialogue on Social Robotics in New Media Art with Japanese Artist Kanno So

The article presents an interview with Japanese new media artist Kanno So. Kanno’s artworks engage extensively with robotics, positioning robots as interlocutors of multi-media practice which traces cross-cultural topologies in between Japan and Europe. The conversation on 11th of September 2023 navigates through Kanno's core projects, such as "Senseless Drawing Bot," "Lasermice Dyad," and "Kazokutchi Robots," which collectively exhibit the nuanced interplay of human-robot interaction (HRI). In these works, Kanno's works become sites of experimentation and resilience, delving into the liminal space in between machines' self-organization and human control, inscribing a cross-cultural journey into uncharted territories of human-robot relationship.