If a robot were to take your job would you be worried? Excited? Liberated?

For millions of workers that scenario could soon be a reality, with technology research group Forrester last year estimating that 1.5 million Australians might lose their jobs to automation by 2030.

One research project involving researchers from UWA's world-renowned biological arts lab SymbioticA, and the Conservatorium of Music, is imagining new ways in which we can think about the automation of work.

The Automation Cultures project is an unlikely partnership between two UWA biological artists, a cultural historian, and a UWA music historian.

Project leader Associate Professor Sarah Collins, from the UWA Conservatorium of Music, says that labour automation is often either framed in terms of job losses or increased efficiency, but that it’s important to explore what automation can mean for the human experience.

“Labour automation can evoke images of human mechanisation and a sense of alienation from the objects that we produce and consume,” Associate Professor Collins said.

“It can also evoke the idea of a liberated human workforce, increasingly free to pursue more creative and fulfilling tasks.”

“These types of images show that the role of the imagination is critical to how we think about and experience work.”

With the same Forrester report finding Australian workers were less ready to adopt automation than workers in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, China and India, the project’s findings will help us consider the future of our human workforce.

“As artists and historians, we’re exploring the role that cultural representations of automated labour play in how we conceive of and experience work,” Associate Professor Collins said.

“From the epic theatre of Bertolt Brecht, in which actors became symbolic of social issues and stripped of individual ‘humanness’, to the operas of Ferruccio Busoni, in which singers’ bodies appeared mechanised by the voices from off-stage, we can learn a lot about how humans and machines work together.”

The project team consists of Associate Professor Sarah Collins (UWA), Dr Ionat Zurr (UWA), Oron Catts (UWA) and Associate Professor Elizabeth Stephens (The University of Queensland).

The project is funded by the Australian Research Council (DP210102044 (2021-2023)) and is also a part of a larger partnership with the Minderoo Tech & Policy Lab.

To learn more, contact Associate Professor Sarah Collins.