The first line of the song “Dancing Through Life” from the musical turned movie series “Wicked” claims that the trouble with schools is that they always try to teach the wrong lesson. If this lyric was viewed through the lens of academic research, one might argue that the “wrong lesson” refers to the boundaries between academic disciplines in terms of methods and practices. Without interdisciplinary collaboration, researchers might not be able to explore different applications of their work or the impact it could have on other trades.
One way that the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab has explored these boundaries is through a collaboration between the lab of Associate Professor Cynthia Sung and The Arts League of Philadelphia. Recently, the Sung Robotics Lab hosted Erin Rose Boyle, artist and the Assistant Director of Academic Enrichment Programs and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, for an artist-in-residence program.
Boyle’s residency culminated in an exhibit of her resulting sculptural work that she titled Dancing Through Life, which merged art with origami robotic designs and software tools, and a workshop at The Arts League for participants to learn how to make a miniature version of her “Dancing Cubes” piece.
Boyle was first introduced to Sung Robotics Lab through an earlier workshop held at The Arts League in September of 2024 that was led by Daniel Feshbach, a doctoral student in Computer and Information Science. “I found out about the workshop that was being held at the Arts League during the fall of 2024,” Boyle recalled. “I knew it was connected in part to a residency opportunity, but I was also interested in seeing how they were applying robotics in relation to art.”
Daniel Feshbach’s ANT project and Erin Rose Boyle’s sculpture “Why Invite Stress in?” share similar mounting structures to attach servomotors.
The workshop aimed to inform the public about origami-inspired robotics and highlight how artistic and engineering design complement one another. To experience this for themselves, participants built their own Artistic Non-Inertial Tracer (ANT), a robot folded from origami that slithers around to trace visually interesting patterns on the ground.
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Pictured above, bottom, from left: Associate Professor Cynthia Sung and The Arts League Director and exhibition host Grace Palladino. Top, from left: Diedra Krieger; Daniel Feshbach, CIS doctoral student and residency mentor; and artist-in-residence Erin Rose Boyle.