3. Juni 2025. 20.00 Uhr Kepler Salon, Rathausgasse 5, 4020 Linz
This year, the Research Collective warmly invites you to an informal evening gathering at the Kepler Salon, taking place on the night before the colloquium. RC member Amir Bastan will share insights into their current research, promising an engaging and entertaining experience. Conversation is encouraged, refreshments will be available, and we look forward to welcoming you there.
Uncertain, Incomplete, Uncanny
You’re alone, replaying a conversation in your head. You begin to speak—first internally, then perhaps aloud. But who are you speaking to? No one is there. And yet, something insists on being said. This moment reveals a structure fundamental to subjectivity. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, Amir explores the distinction between “reality”: what is symbolically ordered and, the “Real”: what resists symbolisation. At the centre is “lack”: not simply what is missing, but what must be missing for the subject to exist.
Turning to robotics, the talk considers why do people fear robots like Spot? Why does a four-legged machine walking in a park elicit more anxiety than militarised drones already in use? Amir argues it is not their function, but their ambiguity that unsettles us. These robots become “object (a)”: uncertain, incomplete, uncanny.
The talk introduces “quasi-interaction”: a symbolic illusion of reciprocity, and “parallel interaction”: two entities acting side-by-side without shared address or mutual structure. In this light, human–robot interaction becomes not communication, but a negotiation with absence, projection, and the limits of meaning.