How Artists Improvise and Provoke Robotics

2025-06-03

arXiv.org

AI Summary

This study addresses the tension between agentic authority and accountability in AI-driven robotic interventions in artistic practice. We propose a “three-tier belief system” architecture that integrates cybernetic feedback loops, conceptual art constraints, and real-time audience physiological signals (e.g., respiration) to construct a mirrored, immersive environment wherein spectators become co-authoring agents. The system unifies multimodal perception, reinforcement learning–based behavioral policies, a generative AI scripting engine, ROS-based heterogeneous robotics (articulated manipulator and quadruped platforms), and environment-coordinated control. International exhibitions empirically demonstrate that audience physiological inputs reliably trigger and modulate robotic behavioral evolution. Our work establishes a novel paradigm for embodied, ethics-embedded AI art practice—grounded in operationalizable theoretical constructs and technical infrastructure—and provides a rigorous framework for addressing AI authorship attribution and responsibility allocation in human–machine co-creation.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Embodied AI
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Safety, Robustness & Trustworthiness
• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Agentic search

Abstract

Symbiosis of Agents is a large-scale installation by Baoyang Chen (baoyangchen.com) that embeds AI-driven robots in an immersive, mirror-lined arena, probing the tension between machine agency and artistic authorship. Drawing on early cybernetics, rule-based conceptual art, and seminal robotic works, it orchestrates fluid exchanges among robotic arms, quadruped machines, their environment, and the public. A three tier faith system pilots the ecology: micro-level adaptive tactics, meso-level narrative drives, and a macro-level prime directive. This hierarchy lets behaviors evolve organically in response to environmental cues and even a viewer's breath, turning spectators into co-authors of the unfolding drama. Framed by a speculative terraforming scenario that recalls the historical exploitation of marginalized labor, the piece asks who bears responsibility in AI-mediated futures. Choreographed motion, AI-generated scripts, reactive lighting, and drifting fog cast the robots as collaborators rather than tools, forging a living, emergent artwork. Exhibited internationally, Symbiosis of Agents shows how cybernetic feedback, robotic experimentation, and conceptual rule-making can converge to redefine agency, authorship, and ethics in contemporary art.

Problem

• Explores tension between machine agency and artistic authorship
• Investigates responsibility in AI-mediated futures and labor ethics
• Redefines agency and authorship through cybernetic robotic art

Innovation

• AI-driven robots in immersive mirror arena
• Three-tier faith system for behavior control
• Robots as collaborators in emergent artwork