This exhibition presents three robotic media installations that challenge the boundaries
between human intention and machine agency. By instinctively projecting intention, emotion,
and personality onto mechanical forms, we humanize robots—revealing both our desire to
connect with the non-human and our assumptions about what it means to be alive, creative,
or autonomous.
Dialogue (Elena Gubanova & Ivan Govorkov, 2018 / CYLAND MediaArtLab) is a
speculative encounter between the creator and the creation. The prototype of the
work is a fragment of Michelangelo’s world-famous fresco The Creation of the World.
Robotic arms perform gestures that reflect human emotions, pointing to the paradox
of the future: a machine created by humans engages in a dialogue that mirrors the
emotions of its creator, questioning the boundaries of subjectivity and authorship.
Different Robot (Anna Frants, 2025 / CYLAND MediaArtLab) follows Anatoly, a small
robot hand, as it seeks to make art in a world of specialized machines, transforming
technological interaction into playful creativity.
Emotionally Aware Robot (Anna Frants, 2025 / Engineering City) interprets human
facial expressions as mechanical gestures, revealing the fragile overlap of perception
and technology, and the ambiguities of communication.
Together, these works invite audiences to confront the mirrored yet contested relationship
between humans and machines, where imitation, reflection, and autonomous action
challenge our assumptions about creativity, emotion, and responsibility. Visitors are invited to
interact with the robots, observing how their gestures simultaneously echo, distort, and
assert independence from human behavior, raising critical questions about agency,
authorship, and the limits of human control.
* * *
This exhibition took place in the framework of the International Media Art Festival CYFEST:
Midpoint — a series of events reflecting on the origins of media art and its resonances today.
Through film screenings, sound installations, robotic media, and live performances, the
festival traces a line from early experiments in cinema, telecommunication, and electronic
sound to today’s innovations in bioart, AI, and robotics. Highlights include Sergei Parajanov’s
early film Hakob Hovnatanyan, sound experiments inspired by inventions in signal
transmission, live performances by the concept horse and Yoshio Machida and robotic
installations that reflect on human-machine interaction.
