Robots and Group Analysis
Roffey Park and the Kubies
I travelled by public transport to Roffey Park (near Horsham, UK) at the beginning of March 2020 aware that the covid-19 pandemic had migrated to Italy. China had already constructed new hospitals within days in Wuhan, something was seriously wrong. Italy was starting to report their first wave, the pandemic was getting closer but not quite close enough. Two young Italian men were wearing facemasks on the train, a couple of women made fun of them, they laughed it off but looked worried about returning home. At Roffey we greeted each other with elbow bumps and foot taps, no handshakes, or farewell hugs. The Taxi driver picked us up and I asked him if he was worried. Waiting for an underground tube in London, I noticed a woman being propped up by her husband against a wall as she coughed and coughed. She looked pale with a grey tinge to her shiny sweaty face. I quickly held my breath as I passed her and moved further down the platform rather than stopping to call for an ambulance. I wonder what happened to her.
Returning to work, my colleagues told me off for mixing with so many people from around the world. I decided to start self-isolating outside of work and began to prepare my client group for the pandemic. On the 19th March 2021 I was sent home with a laptop under my arm to work remotely (a week before the first lockdown in the UK). Little did I know then that I would never return to my office space. We all managed to stay well after the Roffey park weekend which was a relief – 30 days was my marker for being covid free.
The flat screen of zoom became my only form of contact with the outside world. My broadband signal was not great to start with, but it was better than nothing. ‘You are on mute’, ‘you are frozen’ became a common cry not quite realizing the ‘frozen one’ had lost contact with the group at that point. Staring at the screen was intense. I learnt to position the screen so it looked as though I was looking directly at others. Strong connections had been made in the median group at Roffey Park making the ‘group’ transition to zoom easier for some but very difficult for those joining remotely for the first time. The circle became a set of squares with a loss of the symbolic empty seat to welcome and connect with the outside world. Zoom took us into each other’s homes with a greater awareness of time differences and the struggle especially for India, Canada, and Australia to attend the adjusted UK timetable. We met monthly rather than bi-monthly. Instead of the room being full of thoughts and feelings, I was home alone full of fearful feelings from the screen. At the start we ate together during the breaks but over time covid and zoom fatigue set in with a ‘missing’ of the more private conversational spaces of physical connection.
In October 2021 I was able to return the swimming pool towel I had inadvertently taken home in March 2020 to Roffey Park. This was my first excursion back into the ‘real world’. We met in a new room on the ground floor with a beautiful vista of the grounds once daylight arrived. It felt surreal being back with humans, vaccine-booster on board and not wearing masks. Sitting in a semi-circle looking at the zoom screen felt familiar. Then the kubi’s arrived. I loved them, my little Japanese friends bowing to each other with courtesy. I felt the return of the circle, watching the Kubi’s having their own independent playfulness with private tete a tete interactions, exerting individuality by twirling around or turning away from the group to look outside whilst listening to the conversation. I enjoyed visiting India via zoom, watching the street life in the background. I felt freer to avert my gaze from the zoom screen engaging with the Kubi’s as they felt more human. I sent my love to each one in a private emotional connection that no-one was aware of apart from myself. I felt guilty though looking at others in the room. I was sad when the Kubi sessions finished and we returned to the flat screen of zoom. For the final session I became a zoomer having left Roffey early to drive home. I stopped off in a Premier Inn car park logging in on my phone. I felt as though I was in the ‘Gods’ of a theatre looking down on the empty semi-circle with the three staff group. I could not see you (staff group) very well, you were too far away. I felt sad and angry. I would have liked to have been able to ‘zoom in’ on the live group to see it in more detail, as well as being able to see close-ups of those on screen.
I have become attuned to and appreciate the complicated dynamics in a hybrid group, the longing for a return to an in-person group by some and the reality that social distancing and the wearing / not wearing of facemasks also brings in a new, complex and perhaps less intimate relational dynamic as the social trauma of the pandemic continues.
Fiona Parker
fiona.parker1@protonmail.com
Kubi 2 or me-robot: experiencing a group in presence being in non-body presence
Once upon a time there was a group of about 40 members which met every two months, for three days, in a lovely castle surrounded by nature… This fairytale suddenly ended due to a little, not so tiny virus called SARS-CoV-2, and our castle Roffey Park was closed. “Not so tiny” are the magic words that allow us to wear a mask and not being infected, but this particularity concerns more the medical context to which I also belong. The Creating Large Group Dialogue (CLGD) workshop was in the second year of its development when I became a member. I participated to the workshop in person only in January 2020. Some brave and intrepid members participated in the last face-to-face meeting in March 2020. I decided last minute not to go because it was very possible that Greece, the country in which I am living, would close the borders. And this happened the day I had scheduled my homecoming. My CLGD-history started with an inclusive, supporting and friendly welcome by the others members and the two conveners. Until now my memory retains images of the beautiful and pleasant place, colours inside and outside, the green floor and the large windows of our meeting room, the buffet room and faces, hands, voices… The conveners proposed to give a chance continuing online in order to survive as a group during the traumatic experience of the pandemic, hoping it will finish in a few months. Since then, the group setting become two-dimensional, no depth in the screen. In the worldwide context of fear, uncertainty, incapability, not knowing how to survive, disconnected from the past reality, trying to fit in the new one with social distancing, and continuously being at risk to die, online meetings were saviour and rescuer opportunities to carry on. Nostalgia, for the good old time spent together experiencing community life during our workshop, was substituted by anger, hopelessness and frustration for being online. For me, the hardest emotional burden to undergo was, and still is, the sadness related to the fact that the pandemic will not finish soon, the need to endure the situation, the demand to become tolerant, not continuously complaining about our new condition, to accept the new reality in order to survive bodily and emotionally. Despite some changes in the workshop schedule, despite fatigue and frustration of online meetings, safety and continuity of the life group was preserved by long lasting working through ambivalence, frustration, anger, anxiety, feeling excluded, disengaged and disconnected, desire to return at Roffey and disappointment not be allowed to, a new possibility came into view after one year: the Kubi robot. That means the possibility of a hybrid meeting, some of us in person at Roffey and the others on zoom or online with the Kubi robot. The group setting remains two-dimensional, but what each of us experienced and perceived in the new virtual space was splitting at many levels. In a way new spaces were opened, boundaries were more blurred and new boundaries are needed. With my mobile through the Kubi Connect application, I controlled my Kubi-2 robot’s movements and I was able to look around the room. In the room, the others group members, my colleagues, were sitting in a semicircle. In front of them there were screens located in a semicircle, one screen for each member online. On the screen of my computer, I pinned the image of the semicircle, I have the illusion to be in the circle, I saw them “as if” I was there, with a sense of profundity and perspective less reduced than in the two-dimensional space I looked at. Above the pinned image of the semicircle group, there were the images of the colleagues online. I created, on my screen, my virtual space having the semicircle image central and larger as a firmly fixed point of reference. This helped me to remain focused on the free-floating discussion and not been disturbed by other sensorial stimuli. During this robot experience, I realized that focusing on images and making images in my mind of the space I was looking in, but in which I was not bodily in, helped me to protect my self-boundaries. My “kosmos” was a virtual one. I relied on my capacity to make a unified internal image of the group, eliminating feeling outside of the semicircle. Feeling outside faster transmuted in not been accepted or been excluded. Then, thinking processes should be enhance remembering that in a virtual context reality faded on screen. If you trust the group you will survive, even if splitting phenomenon is in attendance. The acknowledgment of the frustration not to be in person at Roffey had been diluted by the acceptance that, at least, the Kubi contributed making me having the illusion to be there, and to enhance my sense of belonging to CLGD group. The blurred online boundaries, the sense of connection which is paradoxically increased in the online space, although feeling disconnected by the lack of personal contact, may cause intense self-disclosure or attenuation of our understanding leading to hostility. What a challenge when suddenly a colleague said “who is moving my robot?” during the first set up. After the initial terror of losing control and vanished in the virtual space, the technician helped checking out each robot one by one. I was the one moving the colleague’s Kubi! That moment I could not speak, I could say only “I don’t know… I don’t know…”. Technology is not perfect. The next day a similar problem happened between two other colleagues. Technical difficulties during an online meeting can provoke chaos in this fragile virtual space. The conveners are working hard to save the boundaries and maintain the group as a safe space for all. What kind of structure the hybrid workshop had? The group setting was separated in at least 3 virtual spaces: the online in person semicircle, the members-Kubi robot and members on zoom. Each space mirroring another, how many dynamic matrices can be recognized? It is intriguing to investigate these different experiences and perspectives. The pandemic imposed on us the virtual space, can it be used to nurture other ways to be together and support each other? Is it necessary to find new rules of the game because the ground has different form? May be more synthesis is needed…
Francesca Bascialla
basciallafran@hotmail.com
Telepresence in the group
Katy Mason
It is a mild October weekend, possibly one of the last mild weekends of the year. I sit in a group, looking through the floor to ceiling windows and out into the beautiful grounds of the building that we are in. A fellow group member also turns to look at the window, I look at the back of his head. The back of his head is matte silver, with a piece of fruit on it.
And so it begins, our first hybrid group. Some of us are in the room in the flesh, we can see each other’s bodies, and walk in and out of the room together. I meet a man who I have only ever met in 2D. It is exciting. I like the feel of his presence, I enjoy the now novel experience of looking at his shoes.
I return to my 2D group members and am met with the jarring experience of seeing the view from one of their cameras. I see myself, my body, my shoes. This doesn’t feel fair somehow. I feel exposed. I have known most of my 2D group members for many months now, but have never seen their shoes. I feel like my body is being filmed without my permission. I try to reason with myself, if the members were in the room they would see the same image, but somehow it feels different. It feels jarring.
So back to the group, who are we? And what are we doing together? We are a median group who meet as part of a course called “Creating Large Group Dialogue in Organisations and Society”. Pre-pandemic we were a face-to-face group who met every two months for a series of interconnected workshops lasting an entire weekend. The group consists of individuals from a number of countries and time-zones but we had been meeting in the UK and learning together throughout the UK daytime. Over the course of the pandemic, the group had transferred to meeting online leading to the inclusion of more members from more countries. This was the first workshop following the start of the pandemic that some us had been able to meet face-to-face, although this was limited to some of the members from the UK who had felt safe to travel. We were using a mixture of “Kubi telepresence robots” and a standard videoconferencing platform to meet with the other group members.
The physical members of the group were sat in a horseshoe in the room. The six Kubi telepresence robots were in the remaining part of the circle. We also had a few members who were not using the telepresence robots and joining over the video conferencing platform, and these members were visible on a television screen which held the final place in the circle. The Kubi teleprescence robots consisted of six tablet computers on stands which were stood on a table. We thought about whether they could sit on chairs like the face-to-face group members, but were told that this would put them at eye level with our chest areas rather than our faces. We made a relatively simple unilateral decision (despite being in a group!) that seeing each other’s faces was probably more useful. The group members using the robots needed to download an app, and input a specific code so that each could connect to a particular robot. Once connected to the robot, those of us in the room could see the image from their webcams (so usually their faces), we could also change the view to check the view from their screens so that we could ensure the correct positioning of the robots. The participants could then change the angle of the robot on the stand, being able to rotate a full 360 degrees horizontally, whilst also angling their robots to look up at the ceiling, or down at the floor. They could then look round the room, including at others on telepresence robots, and those of us in the room could see their tablet computers moving round as they did so. I imagine in the future, that these robots will not be on tablet computers, but on something akin to a Segway that can also move around the room.
We then began the group. It is difficult to write about the experience of the group, as it is impossible to speak for a whole median group about an experience of the inclusion of technology. It makes me anxious, that I cannot fully represent a whole group experience. It became clear that everyone’s experience with and relationship to technology is a deeply personal one. For some, technology is a joy, something which brings connect-ness to their lives and gives opportunities that they would not have had before. For others it is a suspicious entity, taking away privacy, and influencing us in ways that we cannot even know.
For me, I thought the robots were fun. It felt nice to be in a circle again, rather than the group members all being visible on my computer screen. I much preferred a hybrid model which consisted of telepresence robots rather than a TV screen full of people, which to me felt like having an audience. Several group members commented that it might feel even more like a circle if the robots were inter-dispersed throughout the group rather than together on a table.
A negative for me was the unsettling experience of being filmed whilst in a group, feeling a camera on me. I spent a lot of the group trying to reason with myself and rationalise this, shuffling uncomfortably in my chair. I was aware that my own feelings were not logical. I struggled to understand why it felt so different to be seen through the lens of the camera rather than the lens of an eye. I enjoyed being with my face-to-face colleagues and felt no discomfort. I enjoyed physically meeting the group member who I had not met before, but did not like being looked at through a camera by group members who I had met previously. It did not make sense to me, and disturbed and disrupted my experience. This paralleled my experience in the group and has made me think about the issue of consent. I know that as a psychotherapist, it would be highly inappropriate of me to make interpretations of my friends, colleagues or family outside of a therapeutic space, and would be an assault. In groups, we do share our experiences of others with them, and this has never bothered me in the past nor has this felt like an assault. It is something I implicitly consent to by being there. In this group, it did bother me and I felt violated as though I had not given consent. This was in the same way that it bothered me that my body was being broadcast over a screen. It feels confusing for me that something that I implicitly consent to in person, I found I did not consent to over a screen. I wonder if this is my own reaction to the screen, or whether there are subtle differences in how we relate to others over the screen. One quick scroll through the social media platform Instagram shows me that people feel far more at liberty to make personal comments about others through a 2D screen than they would in person. I wonder if there are subtle nuances in how we relate to people over screens, whether something of the human-ness of the other is lost meaning that more caution is needed than in a face-to-face group. I also wonder if the use of Kubi creates differential dynamics that need to be thought about. The face-to-face members can see each other and look round the group room. What they have that the others do not, is that they leave the room together. This could be a solace or a burden. Those on the Kubis can also see each other and look round the group room. What they have that the others do not is that they can control what others see of them and they do not leave the room with the group. They are in their own space, without the group. Again, this could be either solace or a burden, but it is a different situation. This is a changed dynamic to the one where either everyone has the experience of being in the space together, or being in their own space and on a video-calling platform.
I was and remain keen for the hybrid group model to work. It is brilliant being able to be in groups with people from all over the world, and surely a course about large group dialogue should surely work through the challenges that come from including a larger group in dialogue. Technology certainly allows us to include larger groups and people who would not usually have been able to take part in the dialogue. However, there are some inequalities which are reduced with the use of technology, and some that are created, particularly in a hybrid group.
On the experience of using KUBI
Andy Bloom
I could not see the other Kubis in such a way that it felt like they were in time and space, I had to set my screen to pin the view from my Kubi – in order to see those in the room. I used the speaker view on zoom – and could see the other Kubi’s in their small boxes along the top of my screen. Although the experience was more dynamic it also had a sense of being disembodied (maybe dissociated). There was a lot more to attend to technically – as I couldn’t see the whole semi-circle at once so if I wanted to see the person speaking I had to work out how to drive the robot to that spot (my mind being split between the words and that task) – choosing not to use it the next time and rather pin the stable view of the semi-circle was much quieter and easier to attend to the conversation.
Bjarne Nielsen
When I got on Zoom for our October meeting and saw people moving around and talking to each other and others trying to connect Kubis I felt like waiting in a box, cut off. That combined with the technology frustrations I’d had before our meeting gave me an impulse to just lie down on the bed beside me and relax until I was connected to my Kubi.
When I first started moving my Kubi up and down and all around I was intrigued by this new experience. As the work on figuring out the Kubis in the Roffey room went on, I spent my time – intrigued as I was – trying to communicate by speaking, moving my Kubi (nodding or shaking “my head” and chatting with Andy as she was the first of the Kubi screens I had “eye” contact with. It was fun playing like that and when Anando got his Kubi connected, all three of us got “acquainted” as moving screens.
As Andy describes we had joked about logging in to another’s code as the codes were being read aloud during the tech support. So the Zoom chatting felt like a playground with a hint of tension. We joked and agreed that it would be disruptive. Later on, my Kubi screen didn’t move when I touched my IPhone screen, I kept touching the IPhone screen but there was no response. Then I noticed the Kubi screen in the lower right corner of my Zoom screen moving all around correspondingly instead. I was completely baffled and right there I caught sight of Andy’s bewildered/shocked look. At the time I laughed at the fact that we had joked about it and then it happened to ourselves. Since then I’ve been thinking of when playing with tension/frustration becomes reality in such an overwhelming way and the gap that is created, how to tolerate the frustration that links to this gap of not knowing while sensing a significant change. I still don’t get how this disruption happened and I also sense that I need it to be like that for now.