Research Through Art is establishing artistic practice as a legitimate mode of inquiry, yet the operational work of exhibition-making remains under-articulated. While exhibitions are frequently used to present research-based artworks, they are often treated as outcomes rather than as structured research environments shaped by curatorial decisions. Building on the Research Through Art method, we combine first-person reflection and annotated portfolio to articulate a set of modular components that structure how such exhibitions are designed, staged, and encountered. Illustrated through a case study, Perversion of Interfaces—an exhibition of research based critical objects—we present basic operational modules for exhibition-based research output. These modules include shared curatorial prompts, interpretation layers, spatial and experiential planning, peripheral exhibition artifacts, public programming, and post-exhibition reflection. We hope this transferable framework can support educators and curators to present work as exhibitions and to develop modular toolkits for organizing art shows.

As artificial intelligence systems increasingly mediate everyday communication—assisting users with emails, tone, and social interactions—we observe a pattern in which the cognitive labor of social self-regulation is externalized and outsourced. Inter:Lace is a speculative wearable art project that explores the consequences of outsourcing social judgment to a large-language model-based assistive system. Designed to be worn as a conspicuous-looking choker, Inter:Lace monitors the conversational context of the wearer and performs “behavioral intervention” through a tightening mechanism designed to prompt politeness, composure, and social compliance. As a provocative object, Inter:Lace was designed and presented as a commercial product, accompanied by supporting materials, such as instructions and coupons. By positioning the piece as a marketable consumer good that induces bodily anxiety, both the object itself and its display aim to reveal a fundamental misalignment between social assistance and embodied experience in contemporary consumerism.

ClearDose is an AI-driven speculative device that scans users’ facial features and prescribes individualized treatments and affirmations. Drawing from divination and physiognomic prediction—the practice of inferring one’s character from appearance—ClearDose transforms the bias embedded in computer vision and large language models into an apparently benevolent form: a pseudoscientific prescription. Rather than asking who the user is, the system arbitrarily decides what they need. The reasoning and judgments that produce each prescription are fabricated from biased data and disguised as care. Through this, ClearDose stages a relational friction in which the algorithm no longer collaborates with humans but exploits its “over-understanding” of the users to distort experience—offering seemingly well-intentioned advice that is, in fact, deeply misaligned. The work envisions a near-dystopian scenario where AI’s tenderness becomes indistinguishable from its transgressions in care and judgment, highlighting the speculative and embodied dimensions of our hidden frictions with intelligent systems.

This full-day studio invites participants to explore Upstream Salvage as a design method—a mindset that transforms broken, discarded, or obsolete electronics into sites of creativity, experimentation, and care. Building on the “Vape Synth” project—a sound instrument created from recycled vape hardware—the session expands this approach into a collective workshop on re-use and unmaking. Participants disassemble vapes and other salvaged devices to build synthesizers and quick, tangible prototypes that reveal new interaction logics. Over the day, participants collectively experiment with transforming the fragments of salvaged electronics into quick, tangible prototypes that reveal new human-device interactions. Situated within global traditions of resourceful making, such as gambiarra (Brazil), jugaad(India), Shanzhai and Lajilao(China), and more, this studio explores salvaging as a process-oriented methodology for prototyping—working with materials that foreground improvisation, disassembly, and iterative discovery. Participants leave with a prototype, a documented process, and a collaborative zine of “salvage recipes.”

We present GTGraffiti, a graffiti painting system from Georgia Tech that tackles challenges in art, hardware, and human-robot collaboration. The problem of painting graffiti in a human style is particularly challenging and requires a system-level approach because the robotics and art must be designed around each other. The robot must be highly dynamic over a large workspace while the artist must work within the robot's limitations. Our approach consists of three stages: artwork capture, robot hardware, and planning & control. We use motion capture to capture collaborator painting motions which are then composed and processed into a time-varying linear feedback controller for a cable-driven parallel robot (CDPR) to execute. In this work, we will describe the capturing process, the design and construction of a purpose-built CDPR, and the software for turning an artist's vision into control commands. Our work represents an important step towards faithfully recreating human graffiti artwork by demonstrating that we can reproduce artist motions up to 2m/s and 20m/s2within 9.3mm RMSE to paint artworks.

This paper explores a novel tool and materials for brush-like expression in 3D forms. We envision a 2.5D painting device that aims at closing the gap between painterly expression, digital fabrication, and the incorporation of expressive elements present in traditional painting with structural capability. The paper describes the development of the new pigment material, a custom handheld extrusion device, and discusses a user study investigating emerging relationships with the developed medium. We find the reactivity and variability of the medium enabling strong expressive agency and new interaction opportunities. With these, we discuss what are aspects in making that could be embraced to enhance users’ creative agency and ownership in making, postulating a space between artistic expression and utilitarian making–e.g. digital fabrication.

Where does human agency remain in the era of automation and intelligent machineries? Technological affordances create instant ways of accomplishing challenging tasks, where a lot of individual agency is mitigated. In this installation, we present an autonomous musical instrument that invites volunteers to eventually take a subordinate role to machines. Over time, the instrument gradually raises its level of autonomy, eventually overriding through musical patterns impractical to play by users. Juxtaposing machine uprising and an artifact that manifests human creativity, we question the relationship between technology and human on the continuum of symbiosis and adversary, through orders of algorithmic complexity and intensity in the act of music.

Various forms of wearable robotics challenge the notion of the human body, in that the robots render the acquired capabilities in physical forms. However, majority of such systems are designed for specific purposes, where rapidly changing environments pose a diverse set of problems that are difficult to solve with a single interface. To address this, we propose a modular hardware platform that allows its users or designers to build and customize wearable robots. The process of building an augmentation is simply to connect actuator and sensor blocks and attach them to the body. The current list of designed components includes servomotor modules and sensor modules, that can be programmed to incorporate additional electronics for desired sensing capabilities. Our electrical and mechanical connector designs can be extended to utilize any motors within afforded power, size, and weight constraints. We also show how our platform can be used in various applications, in addition to how the proposed design can be extended as well as challenges for future systems.

Physical interfaces with actuation capability enable the design of wearable devices that augment human physical capabilities. Extra machine joints integrated to our biological body may allow us to achieve additional skills through programmatic reconfiguration of the joints. To that end, we present a wearable multi-joint interface that offers "synergistic interactions" by providing additional fingers, structural supports, and physical user interfaces. Motions of the machine joints can be controlled via interfacing with our muscle signals, as a direct extension of our body. On the basis of implemented applications, we demonstrate our design guidelines for creating a desirable human-machine synergy -- that enhances our innate capabilities, not replacing or obstructing, and also without enforcing the augmentation. Finally we describe technical details of our muscle-based control method and implementations of the presented applications.

Drawing as a means of expression has evolved over time, as, and through a means of computation: Since pre-historic time, humankind has been involved in drawing through a myriad forms of mediums that, over many years, have evolved to be increasingly computation-driven. However, they largely continue to remain constrained to human body scale and aesthetics, while computer technology now allows a more synergistic and collaborative expression between human and machine. In our installation, we engage audience with a drone-based drawing system that applies a person's pen drawing at different scales in different styles. The unrestricted and programmable motion of the proxy can institute various artistic distortions in real-time, creating a new dynamic medium of creative expression.

Ubiquitous computing has been focusing on creating smart agents that are submerged into everyday environments, however, recent development on physical computing is demanding a shift from calm computing to a physically engaging form. Computing is no more limited to increasing our comfort through passive and pervasive deployment, they can now be created as being more actively and physically intermeshed into our tasks. We present L'evolved, autonomous ubiquitous utilities that assist in user tasks through active physical participation. They not only dynamically adapt to individual user needs and actions, but also work in close tandem with the users. Among explorations on potential applications, we harness drone technology to realize the design and implementation of example utilities that afford free motions and computational controls. Through various use scenarios of those exemplary utilities, we show how this new form of smart agents promises new ways of interacting with our physical environments. We also discuss design implications and technical details of our implementations.

clayodor (\klei-o-dor\) is a clay-like malleable material that changes smell based on user manipulation of its shape. This work explores the tangibility of shape changing materials to capture smell, an ephemeral and intangible sensory input. We present the design of a proof-of-concept prototype, and discussions on the challenges of navigating smell though form.

Forces of gravity and the concept of a fixed center of mass severely limit the opportunities for product design and user interaction with those products. In this paper, we present L-Shift, a fictional material in which the weight distribution of physical objects is manipulated dynamically. It is a material that shifts its phase between solid and liquid and, therefore, allows for changes in weight distribution and rigidity. This gives designers many more options, as products can be re-shaped, re-balanced and stiffened as needed. Through prototyping with sodium acetate -- a material that has properties close to the proposed fictional one -- we explore user scenarios and future possibilities. We envision that it is possible to manipulate such physical properties of objects dynamically, which will open up new opportunities for designing interactive and more responsive products.

Remnance of Form is an interactive installation that explores the dynamic tension between an object and its shadow. By fusing light, projection, and motion technologies, the shadow can now detach itself from its former role. This creates a new narrative that challenges our perception of reality, what's real and what's not.

The huge influx of mobile display devices is transforming computing into multi-device interaction, demanding a fluid mechanism for using multiple devices in synergy. In this paper, we present a novel interaction system that allows a collocated large display and a small handheld device to work together. The smartphone acts as a physical interface for near-surface interactions on a computer screen. Our system enables accurate position tracking of a smartphone placed on or over any screen by displaying a 2D color pattern that is captured using the smartphone's back-facing camera. As a result, the smartphone can directly interact with data displayed on the host computer, with precisely aligned visual feedback from both devices. The possible interactions are described and classified in a framework, which we exemplify on the basis of several implemented applications. Finally, we present a technical evaluation and describe how our system is unique compared to other existing near-surface interaction systems. The proposed technique can be implemented on existing devices without the need for additional hardware, promising immediate integration into existing systems.

Cord UIs are sensorial augmented cords that allow for simple metaphor-rich interactions to interface with their connected devices. Cords offer a large underexplored space for interactions as well as unique properties and a diverse set of metaphors that make them potentially interesting tangible interfaces. We use cords as input devices and explore different interactions like tying knots, stretching, pinching and kinking to control the flow of data and/or power. We also look at ways to use objects in combination with augmented cords to manipulate data or properties of a device. For instance, placing a clamp on a cable can obstruct the audio signal to the headphones. Using special materials such as piezo copolymer cables and stretchable cords we built five working prototypes to showcase the interactions described in this paper.