What is AI Data Sculpture?


last updated: 2021-06-13       first posted: some time in 2019, I don’t remember the exact date.


A friend of mine mentioned this recent discussion between two multimedia artists on social media about “AI Data Sculptures.” My friend misremembered the term as “AI Sculpture” and my immediate reaction was, what the heck is an “AI Sculpture” anyway? 

Simplified view of Reality


Why the term “AI sculpture” or “AI Data Sculpture” feels weird; let’s dive into that now.

-> Side kick: In my previous post titled How do you make music with Artificial Intelligence?, I give a brief introduction and suggest readings about AI. I am passing those discussions here. The type of AI these artists and I are using in their work is Applied Artificial Intelligence (autonomous software), not General Artificial Intelligence (the kind that would conquer the world). 

Some prefer the term autonomous agents instead of AI. The term AI is problematic because it creates this notion that there is an intelligence related to the autonomous software, without clarifying what intelligence is. Although we may percieve some behaviours that are generated by the software as similar to behaviour of us—intelligent beings, it is arguable to call these software “intelligent.”

...(* ̄0 ̄)ノ
    Back to the term AI Data Sculpture...


(#`Д´)  AN OBJECT IS NOT AN AGENT....!!!!



Ohommm... I am calm now.

The simplified view of reality has three components: agents, objects, and the environment. Agents and objects situate in the environment. Objects are static, they do not react to the changes in the environment, they do not interact with other objects. Agents can act on the enviroment, react to the changes in the environment, and interact with other agents.  

Let me explain reactivity and interactivity briefly. First, let’s give an example of reactive behaviour using house cleaning.  Let’s say that you are a clean and tidy person. You (agent) desire to keep your house clean. Your house (environment) has become dirty (changes in the environment), you (agent) realize this at some point (agent’s perception). Since you (agent) intend to live in a clean house, you (agent) plan to clean your house. Your cleaning plan includes actions, such as preparing the cleaning supplies, cleaning one room at a time etc.

What would be interactivity then? Interactive behaviour happens between agents. Let’s say that you start cleaning your house. You move a piece of furniture, and there is a mouse running out. You immediately stop cleaning and get out of the house and keep running...☆ミ(o*・ω・)ノ

By jumping at you, the  mouse has changed your actions that are planned previously. By moving the furniture, you made a change in the behaviour of the mouse, and it run away from you to find another hiding spot. Notice that this is different than reactivity. After you see the mouse, you don’t give a heck about the cleaning anymore, you just run away full speed. Both agents actions are affected by each other.        

When we mention the term sculpture, my immediate connotation is an object. You may think that the examples of kinetic sculptures contradict the idea that a sculpture is an object. Although kinetic sculptures are moving and dynamic, they do not exhibit agent behaviours such as proactivity, reactivity, or interactivity. When the artwork exhibits reactive and interactive behaviours, then we move towards the realm of Interactive Arts, and the discussion of agent behaviours. In the case of many artworks that are labeled as AI Sculptures, the artworks are fixed-media videos that are played on a screen, and sometimes these screens are installed on a custom-shaped object; hence appearing more like an object than an agent.

A follow-up question is, how do we label these works? Let’s brainstorm. Given that these artworks use content that is generated by an Applied AI algorithm, maybe “AI generated Data” is a better fit? Still though, public may percieve “AI generated Data” as a content that is generated by an Artificial General Intelligence with intrinsic motivations, which is not the case. Joanna Bryson---an AI ethics researcher mentions, communicating a work to the public in this manner is problematic. Another issue is, if the artwork is a “Data Sculpture”, wouldn’t we expect some relationship between the properties of the data, and the form of the sculpture? Do “AI Data Sculpture” artworks have this relationship?

PS: I started writing this article sometime in 2019, and it was online, but not listed on my website until now. Somehow, the page moved its way up on the google searches of “AI Data Sculpture.” Internet has its own marvelous universe. 

Any comments? Feel free to contact me here ->︎ 


The terminology of agents and the concept of simplified view of reality is based on the book:
- Wooldridge, M. (2009). An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems. John Wiley & Sons.

An extended discourse on the difference of reactivity and interactivity can be found here with a focus on interactive music systems:
-  Tatar K. & Pasquier P. (2019). Musical agents: A typology and state of the art towards Musical Metacreation. Journal of New Music Research, 48(1), 56–105.

- Joanna Bryson on AI ethics: http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~jjb/web/ai.html

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