In collaboration with artists-in-residence Louisa Pancoast and Dr. Nialah Wilson-Small, Smashworks Dance presents Austringer, an immersive contemporary dance piece with a network of drones and dancers exploring human-drone physical contact, weight-sharing, and proximity and how it relates to surveillance and intimacy.
We have a generous donor who has pledged to match up to $20,000 to fund this ambitious project, and with your help we can reach our goal:
PERFORMANCES
New York Premiere
June 5-7, 2025
The Boiler
191 N 14th St, Brooklyn, NY 11249
Atlanta Premiere
2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation
May 21, 2025
Rialto Center for the Arts | Georgia State University
80 Forsyth St NW, Atlanta, GA 30303
Artists-in-residence Louisa Pancoast and Dr. Nialah Wilson-Small will continue the research they presented at the 2023 ACM/IEEE Human Robot Interaction Conference in Stockholm, Sweden, pushing progress in the worlds of tech and performance art along the way.
Does witnessing closeness and touch between humans and drones alter our perception of drones; are they a threat or a comfort? A linguistic cousin to the better-known falconer, the term austringer encompasses the complex dynamic amongst a team of predators: one airborn and the other earthbound. Austringer asks how a drone body affects the movement of a human body; do drones have the capacity for meaningful, nonverbal communication with humans; and does this communication support an egalitarian partnership between drones and humans?
Initial steps for Austringer
Dr. Wilson-Small (left) and Louisa Pancoast have collaborated on research at the intersection of dance and robotics since 2021, exploring the role of dance in developing nonverbal communication, shared autonomy, and physical contact with drones. Their research has been supported by Cornell Tech, published by the Association for Computing Machinery, and presented at the ACM/IEEE 2023 Human Robot Interaction Conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
