Adam Donovan and Katrin Hochschuh have started their EMAP – European Media Art Platform kick-off residency in Zagreb. During the residency, Donovan and Hochschuh will work on a production of a new artwork Empathy Swarm – Non anthropomorphic swarm robot behavior using emotion recognition reinforcement and experimenting with human-robot social interactions.

Empathy swarm is a 2-year project building upon topics of consequences of what defines the demographic cohorts of our current society, hints at the characterizing aspects of the next future generation and tries to act as a preventative medicine for a dystopian future.

On Thursday, 26 of April at 2 p.m. at Gallery SC, Donovan and Hochschuh will hold a hands-on workshop Psychophysics Machines Jam Session for students of Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb. Artists will transfer the basic knowledge of robotics, directional sound and visual control ranging from working with mechatronic systems to programming in processing. Artist duo will talk about the insight into their artistic practice and participants will have the possibility to engage with robots.

On Wednesday, 2nd of May at 10 p.m. at the Gallery SC Adam Donovan and Katrin Hochschuh w/ Łukasz Szałankiewicz aka Zenial will perform a piece Saturn3 meets Empathy Swarm, this will be the first time that the artists use emotion system prototype live on stage as part of performance setup. On Thursday, 3rd of May at 6 p.m. Adam Donovan will also hold a lecture titled Robotics in/and music at &TD Theatre. The programme is organized in collaboration with associate partners Showroom of Contemporary Art and Kontejner’s Mochvara Gallery.