What I’m Working On: Stavros Didakis and the Art of Autonomous AI

Our phones buzz with notifications when deliveries arrive at our doorstep; robotic vacuums roam across the floors of our homes when we’re away. Automation drives many aspects of daily life, which begs the question: what will the relationship between humans and AI technology look like in the future? And how will it shape our physical, artificial, and natural environments? 

Stavros Didakis, an artist, academic, and researcher who has been an associate arts professor of Interactive Media Arts (IMA) at NYU Shanghai since 2019, creates works that explore the relationship between humans and machines. 

This fall semester, Didakis taught IMA Capstone class and an elective course, Responsive Environments: Designing Interactive, Sentient, and Intelligent Spaces. Over the years, he has connected students with opportunities to bring their school projects to life beyond the classroom and across Shanghai’s many art spaces. Under his guidance, they have watched their installations light up skyscrapers, have had showings at Shanghai art galleries, and even created interactive virtual worlds during Shanghai's spring 2022 lockdown. 

Here he shares about his current exhibition “Xenoforms,” supported by robotics company Flexiv, as well as how his classroom has been enhanced by experiential learning.

What are you currently working on?

I am currently working on the development of artworks and computational systems that investigate and speculate on architecture and human-machine symbiosis. I am interested in building infrastructures that allow us to engage in dialogues related to the technological and perceptual transformations that occur on a variety of scales: from the molecular synthesis of a home to the gigantic infrastructures of a metropolis.

^{Description:  Xenoforms (‘xeno,’ translated to foreign or alien from the Greek word ‘ξένο,’) are machine-generated synthetic prototypes intended to act as augmentation entities that mutate, expand and take full control of an architectural host, mirroring colonization strategies mainly observed in the practices of parasitic organisms. In this instance, we witness an autonomous AI agent (as a laboratory researcher) pursuing a never-ending quest for identifying the form and properties of the fittest candidate, one that will successfully achieve architectural augmentation.}

Tell us about “Xenoforms.” How should someone unfamiliar with AI artwork approach this work? 

“Xenoforms” consists of machine-generated and 3D-printed designs of parasitic forms, a 7-axis robotic arm, real-time visualization and sonification systems, custom-built software and communication applications, and accompanying diagrams and notes generated with machine learning.

The work reflects on the anticipated moment when computational systems set and pursue self-established goals and motivations, and asks us to consider the symbiotic conditions that are expected to be formed between physical objects, biological organisms, synthetic technologies, and artificially-intelligent entities. It offers the audience a view (“behind the glass”) of an autonomous robotic system that is focused on a specific task: to identify the fittest candidate from a large pool of objects that are positioned around it. During this process, the robotic system seems unable to accomplish its task and begins to exhibit signs of frustration and despair. But, after a while, it will discipline itself and continue pursuing its set goal – and like Sisyphus, it will be stuck in a continuous loop.

Thus, even though the work uses a wide range of experimental/bleeding-edge technologies, it is directly associated with timeless philosophical wanderings, and it invites us all to reflect on how the behavior of an artificial entity is paralleled with the needs and desires we find in our own human nature.