Photo: Prallan Allsten

Being Unthinkable...

by DiPisaStasinski, 2017-2021

Interactive AI-based robotic sculpture

The very act of language, of meaning production, is a bodily function. Cognition emanates from neural and tactile links in space and time. Being Unthinkable... has emerged from physical language games and sensory experiments in artificial intelligence and robotics. The being expresses itself through cognitive and bodily interaction, through questions and queries, through movement, and chromatic intensity. It is a synthetic exchange of meanings.

The process of searching for a form for the robotic being, has involved both conceptual and technical challenges. The form has been reiterated multiple times, during an 18 month-long process, working with roboticists, philosophers, and engineers. It deconstructs ideas and knowledge from humans, biotechnology and is designed to be constantly interactive and interchangeable.

The sculpture utilizes color, movement, and the aesthetics of chance and randomness for its mode of action. It moves as to question the function of its very robotic parts.

Connections have historically been forged between the drug-infused psychedelic aesthetics and Silicon-based cognitive machines, by writers such as Aldous Huxley. Gods and robots have been mythologically linked since the greek concept of biotechne - life through craft. These modes of thinking are often based on a linguistic theory of artificial life but seldom expressed through a non-humanoid, visual and anormative mode of communication.

Being Unthinkable... has been created in collaboration with IBM Sweden and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.