The Unexpected: Enquiries on Human-AI Interactions

Overview Against the backdrop of increasing integration of AI into everyday life, the research project poses questions about emotional and cognitive consequences for humans as well as social and ethical consequences and criteria of judgment. The interdisciplinary project brings together artists and researchers from Italy, Austria and the UK to analyze perceptual situations, wherein the boundaries between reality and fiction are often blurred, with regards to emotional-perceptual responses that have so far received little attention from the literature. Through the development of artworks informed by visual cultural studies, psychology, and theory of perception, questions such as "What is AI really?", "How does interaction with intelligent machines affect our emotional and cognitive responses?", and "How does it shape individual and collective lives?" will be explored. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, the project analyses how human-AI interaction redefines concepts of identity, belonging, and judgment criteria between real and fake experiences of reality. By intersecting and breaking down the boundaries between art and science, the project builds new understandings and critical approaches to the field of AI from a human-centered perspective. Team The leading team role is held by Pamela Breda, experienced artist, Phd researcher at Kingston University (UK) and tutor at UCA (UK). The team key collaborators are Prof. Ruth Schnell, leading media artist and chair for Digital Arts, Angewandte Vienna, Dr. Brigitte Krenn, leading researcher at the Austrian Center for Artificial Intelligence and Dr. Matthew Pelowski, multi-awarded researcher in Psychology at Vienna University. The group will be complemented by several researchers and artists.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming not only how we work and communicate but also how we feel, perceive, and understand ourselves. The project The Unexpected: Enquiries in Human-AI Interactions explores this transformation from an artistic and psychological perspective. Rather than focusing on what AI can do, it asks a deeper question: how does AI, in return, act upon us? Developed between 2022 and 2025 at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Angewandte), this international research brought together artists, academics, psychologists, and AI experts to study how people emotionally and cognitively respond to encounters with AI systems - from deepfakes and humanoid companions to AI-generated images. These interactions are often subtle yet powerful, shaping how we experience empathy, truth, and identity in the digital age. Through a combination of art-based experiments, AI-user tests, experimental films, public art presentation and interviews with leading academics, the project investigated how artificial systems can provoke emotional and cognitive reactions. The artworks produced during the research were not meant to illustrate technology but to question it - offering immersive experiences that help viewers sense how AI technologies may influence their own feelings and thoughts. At the heart of the project lies a simple but urgent idea: AI is not neutral. It learns from us, imitates us, and increasingly molds the way we see the world. It reflects our desires and fears, sometimes amplifying them through mechanisms of prediction and control. By engaging audiences emotionally rather than didactically, The Unexpected exposes the ways in which AI quietly reshapes the boundaries between the human and the artificial. The research also points to the social and ethical implications of this transformation. In a world governed by technological efficiency and constant surveillance, emotions themselves have become part of the digital economy - measured, analyzed, and monetized. The project invites us to pause and reflect on what it means to remain human in a time when machines can simulate empathy and creativity. Ultimately, The Unexpected contributes to a deeper cultural understanding of AI as more than a tool: as a mirror and a force that transforms how we think, feel, and relate to others. By combining art and science, the project opens a space for awareness - a moment to encounter the "unexpected" within ourselves.