arXiv subjects

Varvara Guljajeva

Publications and source records attributed to Varvara Guljajeva.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Why Open Small AI Models Matter for Interactive Art

This position paper argues for the importance of open small AI models in creative independence for interactive art practices. Deployable locally, these models offer artists vital control over infrastructure and code, unlike dominant large, closed-source corporate systems. Such centralized platforms function as opaque black boxes, imposing severe limitations on interactive artworks, including restrictive content filters, preservation issues, and technical challenges such as increased latency and limited interfaces. In contrast, small AI models empower creators with more autonomy, control, and sustainability for these artistic processes. They enable the ability to use a model as long as they want, create their own custom model, either by making code changes to integrate new interfaces, or via new datasets by re-training or fine-tuning the model. This fosters technological self-determination, offering greater ownership and reducing reliance on corporate AI ill-suited for interactive art's demands. Critically, this approach empowers the artist and supports long-term preservation and exhibition of artworks with AI components. This paper explores the practical applications and implications of using open small AI models in interactive art, contrasting them with closed-source alternatives.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Quantum est in Libris: Navigating Archives with GenAI, Uncovering Tension Between Preservation and Innovation

"Quantum est in libris" explores the intersection of the archaic and the modern. On one side, there are manuscript materials from the Estonian National Museum's (ERM) more than century-old archive describing the life experiences of Estonian people; on the other side, there is technology that transforms these materials into a dynamic and interactive experience. Connecting technology and cultural heritage is the visitor, who turns texts into inputs for a screen sculpture. Historical narratives are visually brought to life through the contemporary technological language. Because the video AI models we employed, Runway Gen-3 and Gen-4, have not previously interacted with Estonian heritage, we can observe how machines today "read the world" and create future heritage. "Quantum est in libris" introduces an exciting yet unsettling new dimension to the concept of cultural heritage: in a world where data are fluid and interpretations unstable, heritage status becomes fragile. In the digital environment, heritage issues are no longer just about preservation and transmission, but also about representation of the media, machine creativity, and interpretive error. Who or what shapes memory processes and memory spaces, and how?

cs.DL↗

arXiv2025

Situational Agency: The Framework for Designing Behavior in Agent-based art

In the context of artificial life art and agent-based art, this paper draws on Simon Penny's {\itshape Aesthetic of Behavior} theory and Sofian Audry's discussions on behavior computation to examine how artists design agent behaviors and the ensuing aesthetic experiences. We advocate for integrating the environment in which agents operate as the context for behavioral design, positing that the environment emerges through continuous interactions among agents, audiences, and other entities, forming an evolving network of meanings generated by these interactions. Artists create contexts by deploying and guiding these computational systems, audience participation, and agent behaviors through artist strategies. This framework is developed by analysing two categories of agent-based artworks, exploring the intersection of computational systems, audience participation, and artistic strategies in creating aesthetic experiences. This paper seeks to provide a contextual foundation and framework for designing agents' behaviors by conducting a comparative study focused on behavioural design strategies by the artists.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Interdisciplinary Translations: Sensory Perception as a Universal Language

This paper investigates sensory perception's pivotal role as a universal communicative bridge across varied cultures and disciplines, and how it manifests its value in the study of media art, human computer interaction and artificial intelligence. By analyzing its function in non-verbal communication through interactive systems, and drawing on the interpretive model in translation studies where "sense" acts as a mediation between two languages, this paper illustrates how interdisciplinary communication in media art and human-computer interaction is afforded by the abstract language of human sensory perception. Specific examples from traditional art, interactive media art, HCI, communication, and translation studies demonstrate how sensory feedback translates and conveys meaning across diverse modalities of expression and how it fosters connections between humans, art, and technology. Pertaining to this topic, this paper analyzes the impact of sensory feedback systems in designing interactive experiences, and reveals the guiding role of sensory perception in the design philosophy of AI systems. Overall, the study aims to broaden the understanding of sensory perception's role in communication, highlighting its significance in the evolution of interactive experiences and its capacity to unify art, science, and the human experience.

cs.MM↗

arXiv2024

Loading Ceramics: Visualising Possibilities of Robotics in Ceramics

This article introduces an artistic research project that utilises artist-in-residency and exhibition as methods for exploring the possibilities of robotic 3D printing and ceramics. The interdisciplinary project unites artists and architects to collaborate on a proposed curatorial concept and Do-It-With-Others (DIWO) technological development. Constraints include material, specifically local clay, production technique, namely 3D printing with a robotic arm, and kiln size, as well as an exhibition concept that is further elaborated in the next chapter. The pictorial presents four projects as case studies demonstrating how the creatives integrate these constraints into their processes. This integration leads to the subsequent refinement and customization of the robotic-ceramics interface, aligning with the practitioners' requirements through software development. The project's focus extends beyond artistic outcomes, aiming also to advance the pipeline of 3D robotic printing in clay, employing a digitally controlled material press that has been developed in-house, with its functionality refined through practice.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2024

Visions of Destruction: Exploring a Potential of Generative AI in Interactive Art

This paper explores the potential of generative AI within interactive art, employing a practice-based research approach. It presents the interactive artwork "Visions of Destruction" as a detailed case study, highlighting its innovative use of generative AI to create a dynamic, audience-responsive experience. This artwork applies gaze-based interaction to dynamically alter digital landscapes, symbolizing the impact of human activities on the environment by generating contemporary collages created with AI, trained on data about human damage to nature, and guided by audience interaction. The transformation of pristine natural scenes into human-made and industrialized landscapes through viewer interaction serves as a stark reminder of environmental degradation. The paper thoroughly explores the technical challenges and artistic innovations involved in creating such an interactive art installation, emphasizing the potential of generative AI to revolutionize artistic expression, audience engagement, and especially the opportunities for the interactive art field. It offers insights into the conceptual framework behind the artwork, aiming to evoke a deeper understanding and reflection on the Anthropocene era and human-induced climate change. This study contributes significantly to the field of creative AI and interactive art, blending technology and environmental consciousness in a compelling, thought-provoking manner.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

We Are The Clouds: Blending Interaction and Participation in Urban Media Art

Since the early 2000s, cultural institutions have been instrumental in reshaping public spaces, fostering community engagement, and nurturing artistic innovation. Central to these initiatives are audience interaction and participation concepts, yet their definitions and applications in urban media art remain nebulous. This article endeavours to demystify these terms, examining the distinct characteristics and intersections of interactive and participatory art within urban contexts. A particular emphasis is placed on artworks that harmonise both elements, exploring the motivations and outcomes of this synthesis. The case study of We Are The Clouds serves as a focal point, exemplifying how strategic integration of interaction and participation can enhance community connection and reinvigorate public spaces. Through this analysis, the paper underscores the transformative power of urban media artworks in redefining neighbourhood experiences, empowering local voices, and revitalising the essence of public realms.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

Visions Of Destruction: Exploring Human Impact on Nature by Navigating the Latent Space of a Diffusion Model via Gaze

This paper discusses the artwork "Visions of Destruction", with a primary conceptual focus on the Anthropocene, which is communicated through audience interaction and generative AI as artistic research methods. Gaze-based interaction transitions the audience from mere observers to agents of landscape transformation, fostering a profound, on-the-edge engagement with pressing issues such as climate change and planetary destruction. The paper looks into early references of interactive art history that deploy eye-tracking as a method for audience interaction, and presents recent AI-aided artworks that demonstrate interactive latent space navigation.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2023

Artistic Strategies to Guide Neural Networks

Artificial Intelligence is present in the generation and distribution of culture. How do artists exploit neural networks? What impact do these algorithms have on artistic practice? Through a practice-based research methodology, this paper explores the potentials and limits of current AI technology, more precisely deep neural networks, in the context of image, text, form and translation of semiotic spaces. In a relatively short time, the generation of high-resolution images and 3D objects has been achieved. There are models, like CLIP and text2mesh, that do not need the same kind of media input as the output; we call them translation models. Such a twist contributes toward creativity arousal, which manifests itself in art practice and feeds back to the developers' pipeline. Yet again, we see how artworks act as catalysts for technology development. Those creative scenarios and processes are enabled not solely by AI models, but by the hard work behind implementing these new technologies. AI does not create a 'push-a-button' masterpiece but requires a deep understanding of the technology behind it, and a creative and critical mindset. Thus, AI opens new avenues for inspiration and offers novel tool sets, and yet again the question of authorship is asked.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

Explaining CLIP through Co-Creative Drawings and Interaction

This paper analyses a visual archive of drawings produced by an interactive robotic art installation where audience members narrated their dreams into a system powered by CLIPdraw deep learning (DL) model that interpreted and transformed their dreams into images. The resulting archive of prompt-image pairs were examined and clustered based on concept representation accuracy. As a result of the analysis, the paper proposes four groupings for describing and explaining CLIP-generated results: clear concept, text-to-text as image, indeterminacy and confusion, and lost in translation. This article offers a glimpse into a collection of dreams interpreted, mediated and given form by Artificial Intelligence (AI), showcasing oftentimes unexpected, visually compelling or, indeed, the dream-like output of the system, with the emphasis on processes and results of translations between languages, sign-systems and various modules of the installation. In the end, the paper argues that proposed clusters support better understanding of the neural model.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2022

Synthetic Books

The article explores new ways of written language aided by AI technologies, like GPT-2 and GPT-3. The question that is stated in the paper is not about whether these novel technologies will eventually replace authored books, but how to relate to and contextualize such publications and what kind of new tools, processes, and ideas are behind them. For that purpose, a new concept of synthetic books is introduced in the article. It stands for the publications created by deploying AI technology, more precisely autoregressive language models that are able to generate human-like text. Supported by the case studies, the value and reasoning of the synthetic books are discussed. The paper emphasizes that artistic quality is an issue when it comes to AI-generated content. The article introduces projects that demonstrate an interactive input by an artist and/or audience combined with the deep-learning-based language models. In the end, the paper focuses on understanding the neural aesthetics of written language in the art context.

cs.CL↗