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Paper short abstract

How do embodied multisensory co-creative processes expand and transform ways of performing, making, and experiencing across sensory modalities and artistic disciplines? This paper discusses empirical engagement with AI and real-time generativity in artistic practice across sound and sculpture.

Paper long abstract

Embodied multisensory engagements with AI challenge the relationship between human and machine agency and provide forms of knowing based on felt experiences. In this paper, we explore co-creative processes in artistic practice across sound and sculpture. We discuss how AI-based tools and real-time generativity expand and transform ways of performing, making, and experiencing through the combination of sensory modalities, artistic disciplines, and technology. We present empirical outcomes of our ongoing project Schima-morphe-ichos (SMI), which brings together sonic, visual, and physical dimensions to investigate new ways of performing and synthesising sound. SMI involves sculptural objects made from steel and textiles digitally augmented by a sensing system that captures orientation data as the objects are being handled by performing artists and participants. Sounds recorded whilst manipulating physical materials for making the objects are at the core of the interactive system and constitute an AI training corpus. Handling the objects enables the transformation and the combination of sounds, and the direct exploration of the latent space of the AI model. We reflect on the experience of the artists and participants with the resulting highly dynamic environment, in which human-machine co-creation depends directly on the embodied interaction with the objects and their material properties. In sharing insight into the shifting boundaries between machine and human agency at the intersection of artistic and computational processes, we address how these shape artistic and creative practices.