ISAAC ASIMOV'S First Law of Robotics, as any science fiction fan can tell you, states, "A robot may not injure a human being." Perhaps Hans, a gleaming, barrel-chested automaton, hasn't read Asimov. At a recent rehearsal for Les Freres Corbusier's coming play "Heddatron," he defies his radio-controlled commands and zips downstage, thwacking notebooks and coffee cups, as well as the director Alex Timbers and the playwright Elizabeth Meriwether.
Hans's creators, Cindy Jeffers and Meredith Finkelstein of Botmatrix, an art robotics collective, look on with a mix of worry and affectionate pride. Hans may be disobedient, even dangerous, but he's awfully cute. "He's our buddy," Ms. Jeffers explained. "When we were in the middle of making him and he would just be legs, we'd come in and say, 'What's up, Hans?' "
Ms. Jeffers, 31, and Ms. Finkelstein, 28, have spent more than a year designing the robots for "Heddatron." The work is inspired by "Hedda Gabler," Ibsen's 1890 drama about a desperately frustrated woman. (Yes, there are live actors in it, too.) But in this version, which opens at Here Arts Center on Wednesday, Strindberg and Ibsen fight over teacakes and dramaturgy while Jane, an Ypsilanti, Mich., housewife, is abducted by androids, conveyed to their rain forest lair and repeatedly forced to perform "Hedda Gabler."
"Heddatron" calls for five robots: Hedda's husband, George; his Aunt Julie; the maid, Berta; Judge Brack; and the dashing Eilert Lovborg, played by Hans. Hans and the robot Billy, who plays George, are the most sophisticated of the bunch. They not only move and speak, but also emit lights, smoke and ticker tape. Aunt Julie, who also speaks, looks like an elegant silhouette, while Berta is depicted as a bustling broom and Judge Brack as a box on wheels. "But he's dressed up," Ms. Finkelstein said. "He's got a cape. And a wig."
On a cold winter day, the Botmatrix women are dressed in jeans, engineer boots and layers of distressed T-shirts, which Ms. Jeffers accents with a sparkly gold scarf. If one were to believe the Botmatrix Web site (botmatrix.com), Ms. Finkelstein and Ms. Jeffers are robots themselves, escapees from a semiconductor plant in the Philippines and now dedicated to "the liberation and advancement of creative machines everywhere."
Their actual origins are somewhat less exotic: Ms. Jeffers is from Cincinnati and has a background in women's studies and cinematography; Ms. Finkelstein is a Manhattan native with a degree in computer science and philosophy from the University of Chicago. They met at a pretzels-and-soda social for students at New York University's masters program in Interactive Telecommunication, or ITP. As part of her studies, Ms. Finkelstein designed scurrying robots made from chunky cellphones and children's toys from the 1970's. "They looked like stuffed animals," she said. For her master's thesis, Ms. Jeffers built a moving topographical map that monitored protest of semiconductor factories around the world.
N.Y.U.'s telecommunications program once had a school club called the Robotics Society of America, "but it had disappeared," Ms. Finkelstein said. "When we graduated from ITP, we thought it would be nice to have this group again. But Cindy wanted to call it the Botmatrix." The group, which builds all manner of robots, consists of Ms. Finkelstein, Ms. Jeffers and another ITP graduate, Shelley Ann West, currently on sabbatical. Their work sometimes resembles a jollier version of the destructive robot performances pioneered by the San Francisco collective Survival Research Laboratories, and sometimes embodies theories of writers like Ray Kurzweil, who envisions a blend of humanlike consciousness and technology. Perhaps most of all, however, they want people to appreciate robots — for their design, abilities and beauty. "There's a lot of anti-robot prejudice," Ms. Jeffers said, "and we'd like to turn that round."
The women designed mechanized wristbands for activists to wear during the 2004 Republican National Convention and also organized a robotics lectures series at the Tank, a center for visual and performance art. At the Tank, a friend introduced them to Mr. Timbers. For three years, he had dreamed of a "Hedda Gabler" with robots and he floated the idea to Botmatrix. The women looked at the time frame (generous), the proposed budget (less so) and thought they could make it work.
