Robots (re)Imagined: Art, Engineering, and Speculative Futures

Robots (re)Imagined is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between RISD, the Brown Arts Institute, and Brown Engineering, bringing artists, designers, computer scientists, and engineers together to develop new vocabularies for robotics and art. Robots have long mirrored our collective hopes and anxieties. But what if they could do something else entirely: something poetic, unpredictable, transformative? This course operates as both studio and experimental research lab. Students design and program robots that move beyond utility, building machines that sense, act, and communicate in ways that unsettle boundaries between the technical and the aesthetic. The semester culminates in a public presentation, hosted by BAI, of interdisciplinary projects expanding the social, ethical, and imaginative possibilities of twenty-first-century robotics.