A voice resounds out of nowhere. “Why is she here?” it asks, gently, yet oddly distant. A figure, half human, half digital being, appears on a screen, changing with every movement. The visitor hesitates, looks around. Another AI voice chimes in: “We want to know what makes her tick, too …”
This could be the start of a conversation in Techno Anima, the latest installation by Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO. Techno Anima is an artistic experiment where humans encounter artificial intelligence (AI) and engage in dialogue, involving various AI “personalities” invested with widely differing characters. The multi-voiced artwork is extremely timely. After all, Artificial Intelligence is exciting, but also disquieting. For some, it is the ultimate catalyst of our knowledge-based society, enabling images, texts, and music of a relatively good standard to be created relatively fast; for others, it is a gauntlet thrown down to the human spirit, long preening itself on its creativity. But when a leading scientific organization like the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft addresses the topic, the issue is clearly a fundamental one—perhaps even the very soul of technology itself.
As part of the mcbw, Techno Anima can be found at the Science Communication Lab of the Deutsches Museum in the Fraunhofer Network’s exhibition “Science, Art and Design.” Artist and scientist Yannick Hofmann from the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO seeks to explore the “opportunities from conversations with technology” and focus more closely on the triad of humans, technology, and nature, with the goal of gradually breaking down boundaries. “AI offers completely different possibilities than anything we are capable of, such as identifying patterns in large datasets,” explains Hofmann. In his view, AI is ultimately a tool that enables us not only to perform small tasks, but also to tackle the major problems confronting humanity—climate crisis, medical research, new materials. High time to tear off the mask from AI and make it tangible. This is where art comes in. The interactive art installation Techno Anima, devised with media artist and software developer Daniel Heiss, presents AI agents as personalities that respond in different ways, speaking, displaying images, or even moving. The work naturally prompts some fundamental questions: How much do these machines resemble us, or we them? And what role should they play in our society in the future?
The Human AI project by the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS with designer Felicitas Ferch also takes a playful approach. Stones hang from the installation’s ceiling; when lifted, they activate a dialogue with the AI. This low-threshold access to the technology is deliberately tactile, even sensory, to encourage people without any previous experience of AI to enter a dialogue on, say, trust—that core concept in AI debate.
Yannick Hofmann’s team is going one step further with Techno Anima, enmeshing the AI in a web of self-reflection by various agents. Hofmann’s aim is to communicate knowledge in a playful way, to counter fearful beliefs that AI is only good for deepfakes and other nefariously deceptive purposes. He strives to create a “moment of sensitization,” noting that the experiment has no fixed starting or finishing points; it develops and advances in dialogue with visitors, not from within itself, but in line with the reflections that it triggers, and thus becomes a kind of generator for research questions.
Both projects were created as part of the Fraunhofer Network »Science, Art and Design« that has fostered dialogue between applied research and the cultural and creative sector since 2018. Joint interdisciplinary projects, exhibitions, and conferences reinforce art and design practice as key tools for knowledge acquisition.
