Twenty-First International Conference on The Arts in Society

Abstract

This presentation showcases our creative practice through the ongoing transdisciplinary artistic research project “Technoecology – Performing Computation and Aesthetic Sensibility”, supported by the Swedish Research Council. Our work explores alternative imaginaries for artificial intelligence and robotics by situating technological systems within ecological, emergent contexts. Through artistic methods and experiments, we develop sculptural forms, robotic systems, and experimental environments, searching for emergent expression and computational, vibrant matter. In the interstice between organic and mechanical systems, knowledge and process are built through artistic collaboration, where technology is understood not as separate from nature, but yet another participant in collective becoming within a more-than-human world. Influenced by Karen Barad’s understanding of posthuman performativity - imagining performativity as environmentally situated, not only a substrate of human culture - and Luciana Parisi’s concept of alien subject, we explore the emergence of alien aesthetics as it unfolds materially, spatially, and performatively. Building on our prior projects, our practice seeks to expand conceptions of AI and robotics beyond anthropocentric paradigms, fostering a cross-disciplinary understanding of complex technologies through artistic research. The research is informed by the following questions: How can an exploration of alien agency and posthuman performativity contribute to a new understanding of AI and robotics situated in more-than-human ecologies? How may the artistic concept of performance, mediated through embodied AI, serve to elucidate the intricacies of performed computation? Can experimental explorations of situated technoecologies uncover new aesthetic dimensions and forge new artistic methodologies for understanding interconnections of technology and ecology?