The next step I am taking to further this research is to do an online interactive web publication that could potentially provide small-scaled space for grieving. I will be doing so in a graduate Independent Study course under Ali Qadeer’s supervision at Ontario College of Art and Design University.
In the future, I do wish to continue this research for my graduate thesis, narrowing my focus on the way we grieve robots and what we can learn from it to work on a robotic technology that can help us grieve.
Robotics development keeps advancing. With massive funding for military purposes and the raising popularity of commercial and personal robots, the day where we’ll encounter robots on our daily lives is getting closer.
It is my goal to be involved in this development to advance robotic design with the acknowledgement of our emotional relationships with them, passing my knowledge about potential benefits and harms of this medium and subject of grief to others.
And if I could be honest—naïve even—I just want to pave a way for a future where both robots and humanity are co-existing in a healthy reciprocal relationship, where robots are not weaponized, but nurtured to share joys of living. And if we all could be together through our grief, that’d be joy.
I’m very well aware that grief is not an easy topic to study. It is heavy. It is loaded with emotions. This journey will be a constant emotional labor. Heavy exposure to depressing topics might inflict secondhand trauma.
Grief is too close to death. It lies between the dead and the living. It is what connects the two realms.
A mother of a friend warned me about the consequences of studying something that tends to be grim. “You will become what you practice” was what she said.
Art, robots, and grief—they’re all my interests, parts of me. They are not who I am. It is easy to become lost in your passion and curiosity. I always tell people that my thirst for knowledge might as well become the downfall of myself. I mean it.
Maybe one day I will slip up and become engulfed in my studies. I could lose sight and harm people in my pursue to help them. There are many things that could go wrong, but that’s why I have a community—to have hobbies outside of my research, to surround myself with people with different passions, to hold me accountable for my mistakes, to have a home to go back to.
To be able to give back to the people through my research, I need to be aware of the risks it has on myself and other people. And I’m willing to learn it from others throughout my journey.