Workshop participants are asked to give flesh to illustrations of non existent machines generated by a state of the art AI text-to-image generation pipeline. AI responds to ‘machine of sentient resonance’ and other similar prompts with pictures of haphazard apparatuses that are subsequently made real by the students that are, additionally, required to come up with (real or fictional) functions/uses for/of them.

‘Whatever you dance I play’ by P. Merlos, C. Fotiou & A. Theodosiou. A unique music-box inspired instrument that can be controlled through hand gestures and without physical touch to produce a variety of tones and percussive effects.

‘The unpredictable box’ by P. Odysseos, M. Nicolaou, K. Georgiou, E. Kapona. An ‘unpredictable’ box allowing interaction on its 3 sides as well as via opening it and meant to trigger audiences explore their curiosity in a playful fashion. Beware though! Opening the box would bring this world to its very destruction.

‘MKULTRA’ by K. Charalabous, A. Georgiou, A. Kotzabasaki

Place: USA
Date : 2000
Period: 1953-1973 (It is then that MKULTRA machine would be tested on soldiers. Following the end of the experiments and the eventual declassification of the project, the existence of the machine became known some 25 years later on)

The team tracked what was left of the original MKULTRA and produced a modified version that is now accessible to the general public. Through our machine it becomes possible for Cypriots to experience for the first time the effect the MKULTRA had on soldiers back on 1950s.

‘Relfection’ by I. Christoforou, C. Fotiou, M. Stavrou, A. Patsalidis. Oscillating juxtapositions of rotating lasers !!