We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Julienne Greer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Julienne below.

Alright, Julienne thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I believe I started my creative career exactly at the time it was meant to be started and it has evolved in many different iterations since. As a higher education professor, I am a passionate advocate of mashing up whatever moves you and of encouraging young adults to do the same. My creative career started as a performer when I was a kid, but it has morphed in so many different ways as I have grown literally and figuratively. As a performer, I highlighted the experience the actor took on as the character. How does this character behave in this theatrical space? What always interested me the most through was the humanity of a character. What specifically is being presented about what it means to be human? It is such an intriguing question. We all grow up in different circumstances, but art and drama specifically asks divergent human beings to relate to each other through behavior, story, and relationship. I never lost my interest in this type of analysis. There was always another way of being human I could study that was different than the human I currently was and I could choose to add those elements to who I was at the time. This was a significant choice as a began to teach the craft acting. First, young actors need to understand who they are, then they need adapt to what the script asks them to understand about their character in an authentic manner. It is this type of analysis that I brought to game studies avatars – how do players emotionally relate to the characters they are playing? What makes them more bonded with the characters? It was an exploration of the human condition just like when I was a performer, but now it was related to video games. And I can easily say I found my true creative career when I began to use theatre methodologies to express the narrative of a robot – a robot interacting with a human being. I love working with humans and robots. I believe robots are Humans 2.0 and it will be fascinating to watch how that evolves. No one person has all those answers to that question. However, I know my creative career will continue to help program robots that are as authentically human-like as possible.

Julienne, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I grew up a Midwesterner in a small town, but I was always interested in living in a city. I have lived and loved living in New York City and Los Angeles. I wanted to be an actor from a young age and I began working as a professional in my 20s. But I felt like I wanted something more. My family is very important to me and they guided my career decisions. I went back to school to try to understand what else I wanted my career to be and I found video games and robots! Although, it sounds strange, I immediately believed my understanding of how a story is told (my theatrical background) was an excellent choice for how a video game or a robot might tell a story. My research explores this desire more specifically. For example, how might a robot behave with an older adult with dementia? Could it be a companion? A counselor? A caregiver? And how would that robot behave in order to be a good and helpful companion, counselor, caregiver? And how can that robot be programed to be as authentically human-like as possible. Or another example may be defined as how a social robot be helpful to young adults who feel lonely and isolated as they go to college, or begin their careers. Same robot, but different set of circumstances. Again the meeting point is how well does the programming in the robot fulfill the goal that is needed. Theatrical elements of connection, communication, and engagement are all used to program the robot I am working with whether it is for an older adult or a young adult.

I am most proud of my children, but my work closely follows. I enjoy working with social robots and programming them to help people. I enjoy seeing technology advance to potentially take a machine that can be seen as creepy and harmful (robot revolution!) and use that same machine to further a positive humane relationship.

What I do differently is my work with robots that is based in my theatrical training. I never stop asking questions about human behavior and I love to be surprised! I have used this passion in the human condition to strive to make the most human-like robot possible.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

My work is interdisciplinary – meaning it would not exist without the collaboration with other disciplines. This should not be surprising as I have already mentioned how fascinating it is to me to see how other humans get through life! I often tell my students that I am an instructor because I have spent a lifetime analyzing my own life in order to create authentic theatrical characters, but I’m bored with me! What I really want to know is how my students have made lives for themselves and how that knowledge can be applied to a social machine that is interacting with a human. However, the interdisciplinary nature of my work definitely means I am sometimes explaining, writing about the creative process with individuals from other disciplines such as engineering or science. One of the interactions I have come to enjoy is a majority of the time after first meeting me, an individual from a non-theatrical career will tell me of their years of piano or violin practice or theatre experiences in their youth. What I have come to realize is how much artistic and creative experiences are formative to our identities as humans. Whether we continue to pursue a creative career or not. How we sing, dance, draw, or perform, or any other arts-based activity is absolutely seminal to who we are. The arts create our view of the world. Our expression of the arts as a professional or amateur is essential to how we understand what it means to be human. I believe a non-creative – although I would argue nearly every profession can be creative – understands the journey as an artist because their artist is never far beneath the surface. It is absolutely why robots need to be as emotionally and relationally authentic as human proxies. It is how we will understand them and why we may need them in our lives.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Society needs to support artist and creatives financially and from a more robust national platform. The U.S. should have a national theatre and touring companies that travel. The theatre should be professional and not censored. Art is not created to satisfy and fulfill everyone. It is created to encourage humans to think, to experience matters that they have not before. It is not meant to always be comfortable for the human watching it. Life is not comfortable, why would theatre strive to be comfortable? This certainly doesn’t mean art-based media cannot be entertaining. It absolutely can. But it is important that financial support is given to the art that does not end cheerfully. The discomfort at an artwork that causes an analysis and discussion among ourselves, is what art does. Embrace it!

Contact Info:

• Website: juliennegreer.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliennegreer/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/juliennegreer

Image Credits
Nicholas Badeaux, Badeauxnico@gmail.com