Right at the outset of his book The Empty Space, Peter Brook wrote that “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.” In his model, the transformation of empty spaces into performative venues entails simply the gaze of a third party. However, Brook did not clearly state the fact that, in this model, the performer and the third party have a shared understanding of the context of the performer’s performance.

Focusing on the issues about sex robots, a contemporary source of intense controversy, this article seeks to address the question as to how human affections and carnal desires are articulated or tackled in the digital era. The central argument of this article runs as follows. As computers, the Internet and, most importantly, algorithms continue to infiltrate the affective system of humanity, the emotions, impulses and excitements we previously encapsulated with the term “eroticism” have become comprehensible from the angle of artificial intelligence (AI), and “sex robot” has become a suitcase-like word that involves reductionist response, interaction and communication (e.g. using titillating messages or positions to trigger the users’ orgasms). In other words, sex robots are designed to help their users experience “love” by means of the human-robot sexual intercourse (i.e. signal-based responses). This is a concrete manifestation of the human-object affinity endemic in the digital era.

Thinking ecologically has nothing to do with normative purity or nature discourses in which things never deviate from themselves and in which loops such as desire are evil. Thinking ecologically precisely means thinking that things are queer green sex toys.

Human beings express as much need for reproduction as other species do, yet the former demand much more in terms of sexual drive. In addition to sexual intercourse, they seek spiritual love, pleasure, and intimate relationships, which has not only spurred numerous inventions and innovations in the history of humanity, but also evolved into highly entertainment-oriented consumer behavior and a lucrative, globalized industrial venture. In the Information Age, there is an exponential growth in the sex industry, and the demands for novelty, diversity and verisimilitude from this industry have indeed accelerated the advancement of visual technology and artificial intelligence.