Multi Layered Autonomy and AI Ecologies in Robotic Art Installations
Baoyang Chen, Xian Xu, Huamin Qu
TL;DR
This work investigates how AI-driven robotic agents can inhabit immersive art spaces to interrogate agency, authorship, and responsibility in AI-mediated futures. It presents Symbiosis of Agents, a large-scale installation that uses a three-tier faith system to govern multi-agent behavior and narrative emergence, bridging macro directives with meso-level drives and micro-level policies. By drawing on cybernetic, conceptual-art, and robotics legacies, the method enables real-time feedback among agents, environment, and spectators, turning viewers into co-authors. The contribution lies in proposing a situated-machine framework for emergent storytelling and ethical considerations around labor, control, and accountability in AI-enabled art.
Abstract
This paper presents 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.