Thumos
Synthesis of Artificial Emotions
in Interactive Sculptures
THUMOS: Synthesis of Artificial Emotions in Interactive Sculptures Thumos is an artwork made of an array of five free-standing interactive sculptures. The word thumos, or spiritual Eros, is an ancient Greek word used by Plato in his book The Symposium to describe the part of the human soul that translates to the whole of emotions. I am influenced by Plato’s approach to the study of the human soul as an analogy for understanding the mind and desire of the future of the computing machine by preconceiving the rise of mechanical beings, and speculating on what they could be. The process of the creation of the artwork Thumos follows a research-creation methodology that focuses on the attunement of natural and artificial organisms in a digitally modulated physical habitat. In the Thumos habitat, a community of synthetically emotive sculptures negotiate the transference of artificial emotional states through stochastic dialogues. The dialogues unfold in a charged environment, where the simulated desires and thoughts of the sculptures generate light and sound events. My effort has been to incorporate the capacity of humans to entrain their emotions towards positively charged emotional states in an interactive installation that invites people to co-create with the synthetically emotive sculptures the experience of the Thumos installation. It is in this spirit that my work uses a speculative approach to create an alternative eco-systemic framework for art making based on cybernetic theories and philosophy as its basis.
See the Pen EmotionChemicalResponse Performjam by Hrysovalanti (@Hrysovalanti) on CodePen.
The goal of a sculpture is to find its well-being through interactions with others and to achieve a balance throughout its emotion, or Thumos. According to Plutarch, balance in Thumos is characteristic of a person's ability to move smoothly from an emotion without sudden emotional outbursts or sudden changes. Therefore, balance is also achieved in a sculpture when it also has more control over its emotional state. On the other hand, when sculptures lack balance, they show abrupt changes in their behavior and have more difficulty communicating their emotions with other sculptures, making it difficult to converse. Through their interactions, sculptures explore the challenges of finding balance in an environment of disturbances caused by the ways of other sculptures.
