I am an academic, artist and musician, exploring the relations that emerge when humans and technology become entangled. I work with metaphors, prototyping, speculation, tinkering and mess to re-think technological propositions, whether robots, intelligence, music or distributed systems. My interactive installations have won the Lumen Prize for AI and Art as well as a people’s choice New Technology Art Award, and have been shown at ZKM Karlsruhe, Athens Art Fair, Kinetica, Talbot Rice Gallery. I blend creative practice with technological research, winning a best paper at Human Robot Interaction 2024 for speculative design work around a robotic artwork and showing design work at Tate Exchange. I have also curated residencies and exhibitions exploring the connections between art and data and exploring art and AI at Inspace gallery in Edinburgh. I am part of the Experiential AI/New Real group, and have spoken at ZKM, Ars Electronica, Conflux festival and more, making links between the various practices of AI, art, music and design.

Works

Artificial Otoacoustics

(photo credits to Pieter Kers https://beeld.nu/)

Artificial Otoacoustics is an investigation into a physical deep learning synthesiser with an unconventional soundmaking apparatus that comes to understand its noise making potentials.

Lichtsuchende

Lichtsuchende, a collaboration with Rocio Jungenfeld, is a small society of robot sunflowers that interact by exchanging beams of light. Over the years, they have morphed from a study in distributed embodied algorithms into an exploration of what robot imaginaries might be.

Thawing Colours

Thawing Colours is a collaborative piece with Rocio Jungenfeld, involving ice, pigment, wool, contact microphones and concatenative synthesis.

Chaodependant

Chaodependant, in collaboration with Owen Green and Agelos Papadakis, investigates the use of technology to explore invisibly structured spaces, in particular the attraction and repulsion of magnetic fields. A pendulum hangs from the roof, with a magnet encased in glass as the bob. A circular base supports a collection of glass pods containing magnets, sensors and lights.

Outputs

Selected Shows and Awards

Papers

1. On Creative Practice and Generative AI Vidmar, Matjaz and Hemment, Drew and Murray-Rust, Dave and Black, Suzanne R. (2024) Data-Driven Innovation in the Creative Industries: Creative Data Catalysts

   On Creative Practice and Generative AI
   
   In recent years, advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning have given rise to powerful new tools and methods for creative practitioners. 2022-2023 in particular saw an explosion in generative AI tools, models and use cases. Noting the long history of critical arts engaging with the AI, this chapter considers both the application of generative AI in the creative industries, and ways in which artists co-shape the development of these emerging technologies. Reviewing the landscape of generative AI in visual arts, music and games, as well as our own experiments with generative AI within The New Real programme, we propose four areas of critical interest for the future mutual co-shaping of generative AI and creative practice.

1. Spatial Robotic Experiences as a Ground for Future HRI Speculations Murray-Rust, Dave and Lupetti, Maria Luce and Ianniello, Alessandro and Gorbet, Matt and Van Der Helm, Aadjan and Filthaut, Liliane and Chiu, Adrian and Beesley, Philip (2024) Companion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction

   Spatial Robotic Experiences as a Ground for Future HRI Speculations
   
   This work illustrates how artistic robotic systems can provide a reservoir of unfamiliarity and a basis for speculation, to open the field toward new ways of thinking about HRI. We reflect on a collaborative project between design students, a media art studio, and design researchers working with the baggage handling department of a strategic European airport. Engaging with the industrial context, we developed ’meta-behaviours’ - abstracted ideas of processes carried out on the worksite and passed these over to the students who translated them into robotic enactions based on hardware and a form language developed by the media art studio. The resulting visit experience challenges the audience to decode the installation in terms of meta-behaviours and their possible relations to industrial HRI. We used this to reflect on the value of conducting artistic and speculative work in HRI and to distil actionable recommendations for future research.

1. Experiential AI: Between Arts and Explainable AI Hemment, Drew and Murray-Rust, Dave and Belle, Vaishak and Aylett, Ruth and Vidmar, Matjaz and Broz, Frank (2024) Leonardo

   Experiential AI: Between Arts and Explainable AI
   
   Experiential artificial intelligence (AI) is an approach to the design, use, and evaluation of AI in cultural or other real-world settings that foregrounds human experience and context. It combines arts and engineering to support rich and intuitive modes of model interpretation and interaction, making AI tangible and explicit. The ambition is to enable significant cultural works and make AI systems more understandable to nonexperts, thereby strengthening the basis for responsible deployment. This paper discusses limitations and promising directions in explainable AI, contributions the arts offer to enhance and go beyond explainability and methodology to support, deepen, and extend those contributions.

1. Decentralised Creative Economies and Transactional Creative Communities: New Value Discovery in the Performing Arts Elsden, Chris and Speed, Chris and Murray-Rust, Dave (2024) Data-Driven Innovation in the Creative Industries: Creative Data Catalysts

1. Actor-Flower-Mesh-Work: Making Environments Together von Jungenfeld, Rocio and Murray-Rust, Dave (2023) Creating Digitally: Shifting Boundaries: Arts and Technologies—Contemporary Applications and Concepts

   Actor-Flower-Mesh-Work: Making Environments Together
   
   In this paper we use an Ingoldian ‘meshwork’ and a Latournian ‘actor network’ approach to unpack the complexities of devising and constructing complex situations that combine creativity and technology. To do this, we draw on our experience of creating and exhibiting an interactive installation. We draw on our observations of the interactions, relations and correspondences between the installation, its elements and the people that visited the space. We develop a discussion of these theories somewhat auto-ethnographically around the artwork Lichtsuchende, a group of robots with social behaviours enacted through light. Their trajectories of becoming are not that straightforward, and by looking at the moments of becoming we can delve into understanding the artwork better using two distinctive approaches: Ingold’s meshwork and Latour’s actor-network. The two approaches enable us to investigate from within and from outside. We seek to understand the ways in which these viewpoints can be applied as methodologies to unpack the factors involved in the creation of an artificial society and the emergence of a shared environment made of human and non-human things.

1. Thinking through Robotic Imaginaries Murray-Rust, Dave and von Jungenfeld, Rocio (2017) RTD2017

   Thinking through Robotic Imaginaries
   
   Lichtsuchende is a society of static robots: autonomous to some degree, exhibiting social behaviour and interacting with humans. Responsive and communicative, they perform creature-hood. We use this as a vehicle to question the relationship with their designers, and the reconfiguration of design methodologies around the bringing forth of situated, responsive things, that possess a sense of being in the world. Their quasi-creaturehood situates them between made objects and living beings. We are interested in how we design for the lifeworld of creatures who do not yet exist, how much we can support their being rather than imposing our will on their matter. We argue for a sense of stewardship not ownership – a responsibility to the artefacts, made clear by their creaturehood. We look after them, hold robot surgeries, recognise personality in their defects, and support their life course from installation to installation, as their society grows and changes. We are interested in the pivotal moments in this journey, where design feels as if it is led by their needs rather than our desires: designing with and for the things. In particular, we are interested in beginning to understand the unplanned imaginaries latent in their socialisation, while acknowledging unavoidable design biases.

1. Lichtsuchende Murray-Rust, D. and Von Jungenfeld, Rocio (2016) Interactions

1. Lichtsuchende: A Society of Cybernetic, Phototropic Sunflowers Murray-Rust, Dave and von Jungenfeld, Rocio (2015) Creativity and Cognition 2015

   Lichtsuchende: A Society of Cybernetic, Phototropic Sunflowers
   
   Lichtsuchende is an interactive installation, built using a society of biologically inspired, cybernetic creatures who exchange light as a source of energy and a means of communication. Visitors are invited to engage with the installationusing torches to influence and interact with the phototropic robots. The embodied algorithms give rise to emergent behaviours with communicative and emotional resonance, allowing a duet between the humans and the cybernetic beings.

1. Lichtsuchende : Exploring the Emergence of a Cybernetic Society Murray-Rust, Dave and von Jungenfeld, Rocio (2015) Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design, 4th International Conference, EvoMUSART 2015 (LNCS 9027)

   Lichtsuchende : Exploring the Emergence of a Cybernetic Society
   
   In this paper, we describe Lichtsuchende, an interactive installation, built using a society of biologically inspired, cybernetic creatures who exchange light as a source of energy and a means of communication. Visitors are invited to engage with the installation using torches to influence and interact with the phototropic robots. As well as describing the finished piece, we explore some of the issues around creating works based on biologically inspired robots. We present an account of the development of the creatures in order to highlight the gulfs between conceptual ideas of how to allow emergent behaviours and the manners in which they are implemented. We also expose the interrelations and tensions between the needs of the creatures as they emerge and the needs of the creators, to understand the duet between the cyber-organisms and their initiators. Finally, we look at the ways in which creators, robots and visitors are enrolled to perform their functions, so that the network of activity can be woven between all parties.

1. Linking Science and Arts: Intimate Science, Shared Spaces and Living Experiments Perelló, J. and Murray-Rust, D. and Nowak, A. and Bishop, S.R. (2012) European Physical Journal - Special Topics

   Linking Science and Arts: Intimate Science, Shared Spaces and Living Experiments
   
   We aim to move beyond the idea of art as a tool for communicating science, towards a truly interdisciplinary practice where art and public engagement are a fundamental part of the way that science is carried out as promoted by the FuturICT project. Artistic exploration can have a scientific impact when artists act as designers, catalyzers and coordinators of experiments, which scientists interpret and respond to. We propose the creation of a travelling show, consisting of a set of core exhibits and ’living experiments’: interactive, evolving pieces which blend artistic experience and scientific research. We also propose the creation of a new production oriented, distributed, inter-institutional research centre, focused on developing parallel relations between artistic practice and diverse fields of science. All these initiatives will be aligned with different areas of the FuturICT project, using different aspects of the Living Earth Simulator, Planetary Nervous System, and Knowledge Accelerator to support the creation of rich, interactive, collaborative experiences and in close contact with the educational and participatory platforms of FuturICT.

1. Thawing Colours: Dangling from the Fuzzy End of Interfaces Murray-Rust, Dave and von Jungenfeld, Rocio (2012) Physicality 2012 - Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Physicality

   Thawing Colours: Dangling from the Fuzzy End of Interfaces
   
   In this paper we present Thawing Colours, a tactile, visual and sonic installation, which uses suspended spheres of melting ice to paint on surfaces, woollen strings to provide a means of interaction, and concatenative synthesis–the stitching together of many small fragments of sound–to provide a digitally mediated response to motion and vibration by resynthesizing the input sound using a corpus of pre-prepared sounds. In one sense, it is an evolving, site-specific physical installation, a painter or designer that produces images over the course of several days. With some intellectual license, it can be taken as a naturalistic interface for querying a database of sounds, or as a particularly large and unwieldy musical instrument. It is literally a fuzzy interface, with boundaries extending out through the fibres of the woollen strands used to attach coloured balls of ice, and through the supporting cables into the foundations of the building, and through the fingers, palms, and bodies of the participants. We argue that there is a niche for interfaces that are whimsical, ludic and exploratory, and that as part of exploring this niche, we can take an ecosystemic view on interfaces: embracing their physical properties, their situation in an environment, and the byproducts and feedbacks therein.