Exploring Robots, Puppets, Artificial Life, and the Human Mind through Creative Works from Czechia

What makes us human? What constitutes intelligence? How do various art forms come into dialogue with cognition, law, medicine, and technology? In this seminar we will engage with works from the Czech Lands, Czechoslovakia, and the Czech Republic, centered on works by writer Karel Čapek, composer Leoš Janáček, filmmaker Jan Švankmajer, and Czech Cubist painter Emil Filla, sculptor Otto Gutfreund and architect Josef Gočár. Selected texts by Ryunosuke Akutagawa and texts on puppetry from Japan will provide an alternative cultural perspective. These works provide different lenses through which to explore questions of human experience, intelligence, and society.