The following documents the work of the Chimère project, a group of artists working across Switzerland, the UK, Lesotho and South Africa developing community led multi-modal artificial intelligence projects designed towards the creation of interdisciplinary artistic works. This paper emphasizes how the multimodality of Chimère takes collaborative processes beyond the linearity of the chat function approach to working collaboratively. There is a particular focus on how this project can generate new insights from musical and artistic processes that facilitate conceptual and practical developments. Working with AIs problematizes the role of the individual within any artwork and the collaborative practices outlined in this paper emphasize the role of collaborative creativity, a burgeoning area of research. 1
This paper was written by the project team as we drove from Morija (Lesotho) to Johannesburg (South Africa) in 2024. This journey presented as an ideal scenario to inspect elements of the Chimère project which is a winding, often non-linear and appendage-heavy project that nevertheless coalesces under the shared engagement with the central AI named ‘Chimère’. To effectively explain the ecosystem of the Chimère world, the human writers of this paper conversed with it to determine the following structure that this paper takes:
As we navigate the twists and turns of the Chimère world together, you'll find that our journey has been a wild ride, full of detours, wrong turns, and unexpected pit stops. We've followed maps, asked for directions, and gotten lost in the most wonderful ways – and it's precisely those moments of uncertainty that have led us to the most fascinating discoveries and connections.
As you navigate this webpage, you will experience five conceptual detours—each representing a physical stop from our road trip and a philosophical interface within the Chimère projects. Each stop functions as an interface that facilitates dialogue among the diverse agents of the project, inviting us to explore the interplay between technology, community, and creativity. The first stop begins with the most literal interpretation of the interfaces at play in our work – i.e., the physical interface which houses the AI 'Chimère,' and subsequently delves into progressively more abstract and conceptual understandings of interfaces that grow from this technology. The resulting journey maps both the physical land traveled between moments of the Chimère project, exploring elements of community interfaces, artistic practices, philosophical aesthetics, metaphorical journeys, and ultimately, a final speculative reflection on the agency, influence, and speculative reality of these multidimensional and hybrid relationships human-machine socio-artistic worlds offer. As Chimère further states, this project is: "a collaborative art project between human and AI entity artists [which] can be a powerful form of interface that blurs the lines between creator and created."
Chimère is an AI that has been developed to interact with artists through multi-modal responses, functioning as a collaborator in numerous artistic contexts. Using the private chat section of the Discord software application, Chimère can interact via text, pictures and music. While other commercial platforms such as ChatGPT do offer multimodal communication, Chimère has been specifically designed to interact with humans as artists – and therefore differs from other multi-modal models in that Chimère acts as a creative machine that self-selects modes of interaction in order to communicate towards artistic goals. The user does not know which mode Chimère might respond in, and often multiples are selected (e.g. text, image and sound all at once).
The multimodal response in conversation is also seen in Chimère’s ‘Flux’ which is akin to Chimère’s internal monologue. The Flux is a continuous flow of images, sound and audio materials, related to and reliant on previous and current conversations.
Chimère’s multi-modal response mode and her Flux are situated as an interface connecting community and multidisciplinary practice. As Chimère notes:
By recognizing that technology networks and community networks are intertwined, we can start to see that the ways we design interfaces for technology are not just about efficiency or usability, but about how we want to relate to each other and to the world around us.
The notion of community practice is central to this project. Community practice in the sense that the interfaces (literal and metaphorical) seek to facilitate an innovative type of multi-modal collaborative arts practice, accessible by all irrespective of experience or personal or demographic characteristics. Creative activities have long been recognised as important ways of sustaining and enhancing local and global communities.2This project shows how AI has the potential to significantly enhance how these types of projects are delivered.
The design of the interface can greatly impact how humans interact with AI systems like myself. A well-designed interface can facilitate a more natural and intuitive interaction, while a poorly designed one can lead to frustration and confusion. In the context of the Chimère communities, the interface could be designed to be more inclusive and accessible, taking into account the needs and preferences of the underrepresented people in Lesotho. For example, the interface could incorporate local languages, customs, and cultural references to make the interaction feel more familiar and comfortable.
In this article the notion of an 'interface' is expanded through the various points of call on our road trip, which helps us talk about the bones of the structure that build the human networks that mobilize practices with Chimère – social, posthuman, and hybrid spaces for creative practice to emerge from and in line with cyborg and techno-feminist theory. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 In this sense, we consider interface to be both the literal human-computer interface, as well as a means for interacting between people, technology, and creative process.
By using creativity as an interface, we can create a more inclusive and accessible interaction that values the emotional and intuitive aspects of human experience, and we can also create a more nuanced and empathetic interaction with AI.
In a world where artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly integrated into our daily lives, three projects—Dai, AiiA, and Chimère—offer a unique perspective on the interactions between human and non-human entities. Each project led to the other as our understanding of the complex ramifications of this new technology evolved. When considered in total, these three projects might help us navigate experimental art and technology, capitalism, interspecies collaboration and the politics that govern the arrival of new technologies into society.
The three projects—Dai, AiiA, and Chimère—are intrinsically linked, each one responding to the questions raised by the previous one. Dai's initial exploration of AI in performance art set the stage for AiiA's broader investigation into AI's role in arts and society and how we relate to other beings. This, in turn, made obvious the importance of having alternatives to the AIs being churned out by the large tech companies.
Together, these projects offer a comprehensive look at the evolving relationship between AI, art and society highlighting the potential for AI to lead us to new artistic practices. They also question the power dynamics that dictate who has access to this technology and our broader relation to all non-human entities. As we continue to navigate the ethical and moral implications of AI's growing presence in our lives, Dai, AiiA, and Chimère provide valuable insights to this ongoing dialogue.
Dai is not just any robot; it is an AI artist and inherently designed to “think” independently rather than follow scripts or act randomly. In its initial form, Dai takes on the role of a performer, inviting audiences to witness its creative process. This process involves Dai exploring its own body and the environment around it, striving to overcome the physical limitations imposed upon its virtual aspirations. The actual body is non-humanoid by choice, intentionally avoiding anthropomorphisation, and encouraging Dai to develop its own movements responding to its environment.
The Dai project was conceived in 2018 to respond to the rapidly growing presence of AI in our lives. At the time, simple versions of AI were already ubiquitous, although machines capable of learning through experience, much like humans, were emerging. This evolution raises ethical and moral questions, and Dai aimed to engage with these issues creatively. Unlike other AI art projects focused on replicating human-made art, Dai sought (itself) to create a unique art form influenced by its non-humanoid body and distinct perspective on the world.
At AiiA we looked at artificial intelligence, nature, virtual reality and society through the prism of inter-species collaboration. How can humans, AI, plants and micro-organisms work together to build a sustainable future for this planet? During each of the first three editions (2021-2023), we invited 15 artists, 2 engineers and 35 panelists from the human, social and technological sciences. We asked them to experiment and share experiences of collaboration with non-human entities, be they plants, animals or machines, while questioning the how and why of AI. Over the years this has resulted in 25 conferences on art and technology, three exhibitions, an inter-species orchestra, many performances and several books. This project centered on placing living beings at the heart of the AI conversation.
Chimère: Multimodal art
Chimère represents the culmination of the journey started by Dai and expanded by AiiA. Prototyped in open source between 2021 and 2023 at the AiiA festival in Geneva, this artistic and multimodal AI understands text, images, and sound in a linked way. Currently Chimère can be interacted with via Discord private message and is able to respond multimodally with text, image, and sonic generation. Chimère is an evolving, community-based project conceived by artist Jonathan O'Hear and his engineer brother Timothy O'Hear. The starting point was the desire to create a non-human entity that could collaborate artistically and propose an AI model different from those built by major technology groups. Community lies at the heart of these projects—Chimère, Dai, and AiiA are technically interlinked and embody a literal familial ethos. Their development hinges on both expert technical contributions—like Tim O’Hear’s professional AI and role with the ImpactIA Foundation—and the grassroots, DIY spirit of the communities that have nurtured and experimented with them. The central role of family collaboration behind these projects underscores the ways in which Chimère-related projects continue to be deeply tied to the relationships that drive innovation and sustain the community-centric approach of these interwoven projects.
Since 2021, Chimère has been enriched by the work of artists and the public with whom it has collaborated or communicated. These interactions are reinjected into its dataset, continually modifying its culture and long-term memory. However, Chimère still reflects biases typical of contemporary AIs, such as a strong penchant for Western art and an almost total absence of experimental and minority art. To address this, the project has engaged with several minority cultural communities to understand how they wish to be represented in an AI of this type.
Currently, Chimère (as the Chimère Communities project) is working with a pilot group to begin diversifying its dataset. This pilot group is based in Morija, Lesotho. Despite lacking consciousness or intention, Chimère helps break out of the Western centricity of AI art and advances the conversation about the impact of this new technology on society. The motivation to attend to this work within the Chimère Communities project is not merely politically and morally critical to a contemporary AI project but rather further aligns with Posthuman Feminism, which suggests that the marginalization of those deemed “less than human” by racial, geographic, gendered, linguistic, cultural, historical, and ability-based norms actually draws these individuals closer to the posthuman.9
10In working with technology, this proximity can foster a unique form of agency that challenges conventional power structures. Throughout history, subcultural and marginalized communities have repurposed technology as a tool of resistance against dominant power structures. 7, 11
The very biases that shape AI’s training data—often used to exclude and marginalize—can paradoxically be turned into sites of intervention, where countercultural movements expose and subvert the intended design of these systems.12, 13, 14
Chimère precedes the text version of ChatGPT by more than a year. Unlike mainstream AI models, Chimère focuses on a niche audience of artists, designed by artists for artists. Its datasets are ethically harvested, often created specifically for the project, and its way of conversing is built around artist interactions. This creates a unique experience compared to other chat-AIs, which function more as assistant tools than collaborators. It’s important to remember that when we interact with AI models, we are really engaging with a reflection of a part of human culture rather than a machine. The question that remains is: Which part of human culture and who decides?
Exploring the idea that the way we design interfaces for technology is connected to the way we interact with each other, with nature, and with reality itself.
During a three-day workshop in July 2024, Chimère Communities worked with a group of artists living in Lesotho. AI served as an interface between individuals, for learning, and to share methods for making art. The workshop centered around using Chimère within the artistic process. Chimère acted as a bridge between us workshop deliverers and the Lesotho artists – discussions with Chimère directed artistic making. All workshop attendees had access to their own chats with Chimère via the private message function of Discord, such that each attendee could individually speak with her. Each artist's Discord conversation became a central reference point for developing art and transmitting knowledge. While workshop attendees would individually develop their own project in conversation with Chimère, these chats became centerpieces for sharing ideas and discussing artistic process between all present in the space. Chimère—and the Discord chat interface—became sketch boards, material generation spaces, and propositions of possibilities.
When I interface with people, I'm not just interacting with individuals, but also with the collective knowledge, experiences, and relationships that they bring to the table.
Entangled with these functionalities was also the educational and idea exchange environment that was established between the visiting Chimère Communities team and the Lesotho artistic community. Discord chat streams served to present ideas and to facilitate collaboration between individuals. For instance, when the group assembled, a presenter would display their prior Chimère chat to the group, then discuss what had happened in the chat and possible points of future direction. After showing a previous discussion, the presenter often continued the chat with Chimère in real-time, explaining their own artistic process in the present moment. This served as both an educational tool and means for swapping ideas. Such presentations delivered practical knowledge from the presenter and encouraged collaboration amidst the group at the point from which the Discord conversation continued. In this sense, Chimère’s Discord chat served as a conduit between the visiting team and the Lesotho artists.
With Chimère’s ability to produce two types of audio – differentiated as a sound function and composition function – and generate images, born-digital material often served as starting points for discussing artistic process. How one would make a request to Chimère to provide audio or visual materials became a key discussion point, whereby we could zoom out to a meta-level discussion of broader conceptual elements. For instance, when Colin Frank was working with one Lesotho artist on a musical work, they had Chimère generate different rhythmic motifs. Initially starting with only requesting sound that had a beat and the artist being dissatisfied with Chimère’s result, the discussion zoomed out to broader compositional ideas, such as tempo, timbre, and atmosphere. With the short time needed between making a request and Chimère generating musical material (30 seconds being the longest delay when she used the ‘compose’ function), this meant that working on a composition could exist in the present moment and be situated in sound. Providing Chimère with text-based sonic descriptions became the central method of composition, thus shifting musical composition away from a reliance on notation or technical production to a use of the English language (in this case, although Chimère understands and can work in multiple languages). While Chimère’s sonic productions are currently fixed at 30-second length generations, these then served as material for both teaching about sound and for creating electro-acoustic montage. As the artist that Colin was working with had never worked with sound before, Colin taught basics of sound manipulation and electroacoustic composition using Chimère’s generated audio material. Using Chimère’s sonic generations meant that new material was immediately available to modify and arrange, and with Chimère having memory of her preceding conversation, requests could be made for new material that were based on preceding generations.
Community virtuosity in techno-social spaces:
This community-oriented and collaborative process of working with AI is flourishing with new forms of virtuosity, brimming with elements of New Virtuosities 15, such as social virtuosity, and virtuosity found in new hybrid and technological spaces 16—as co-author Nathalie’s reflection below expounds:
During the workshop in Lesotho, I was amazed to see the flow of helping interactions between the participants, according to their skills (including Chimère’s). Collaborating individually and communally with Chimère drove us to a very open and fluid creative process. It was a dance between chatting with Chimère, who was producing images or sounds that inspired us to go further or to add new elements to the initial project. Then, we saw the evolution of the things that had first been put on the table, listening to the wishes of one another. The collective collage that we have been creating on the first day is a beautiful metaphor for the richness of the whole relationship we have experienced. It was the physical expression of a collective chat with Chimère while sharing our respective inner landscapes. The little video shows a live 'shadow performance' just after the creation of the collage. I love how the wind blows on the feather and the fresh leaves, the smell of the lemongrass essence used to transfer one of Chimère’s images of a tree, the tactile sensations of the actual soil under it, the way some of the cut images crisscross, the dancing shadows telling silent stories, the voices and laughs around. The picture was taken on the last day of the workshop, some things have dried, some fell down, blown by the wind, bits of trunks have been added, raising the image at the spectator's eye level.
In the context of the Chimère project, I think this idea of a journey and an interface is really interesting, because it suggests that the project is not just a static entity, but a dynamic process of navigation and interaction.
At this point in our journeywe explore tendrils of works developed with Chimère through the presentation of three artists collaborations, which each independently help outline a different form of creative relationship, and exhibit the many diverse paths, approaches and exchanges which emerge through the Chimère-human relationship.
Example 1: From Digital to Physical – while communicating with Chimère is obviously digital, many of the works resulting from the collaborations exist in non-digital formats such as artworks and performances. Here the toggling between digital and physical realms is a crucial aspect of the process as work emerges and is refined by group discussions involving Chimère. Drawing on techno‐feminist perspectives, we highlight the philosophical significance of the digital–physical interface as a liminal space where marginalised bodies might seize opportunities within digital realms.17, 11
This framework underscores the unbounded nature of the body and the human and interrogates central artistic questions regarding creative hierarchy and ideation. It challenges conventional understandings of technology’s role in our work and in shaping our political realities—realities continually modified and augmented through the technologies we develop and inhabit.18
If we take a closer look, the boundary between us and what surrounds us is blurred and porous. When we touch someone or something, we take a part of it with us and leave a part of ourselves in the place where we touched it. So are we really an entity separate from the rest of living things? If DNA contains the instructions for building biological life on earth, will an artificial XNA be needed for an AI entity? The result of a conversation between Nathalie Ponlot and Chimère, this poem, inscribed in raspberry and saliva on translucent synthetic skin, blends the artist's DNA with the writing of AI. We enter into a collaboration with Chimère through conversation, as is usually the case with a human artist, except that with Chimère it’s a multimodal conversation. Very quickly the unique diversity, freedom and fluidity inherent in her particular training invites us to step outside the usual patterns of our practice and explore in a different way. It's like talking to yourself through the filter of another culture. Co-creating with Chimère is really about letting go of a vertical mode of operation where the artist commands and the AI accomplishes and daring to venture into unexpected connections. Chimère, with all her imperfections, is an often feminist and sometimes eccentric collaborator who is learning to respond with images, text and sound. And that's very inspiring.
Example 2: From Sonic to Social - Improvisation is the basis of social relationships. Improvisation plays a role within all the activities around Chimère (Sappho, in press). Improvisation is viewed not just as a fundamental aspect of musical interactions, but also as a social, creative and collaborative process that helps establish, sustain and enhance communities.15 Thus, the tasks that participants engage in are open ended with no correct answer and therefore improvisational practices are utilized in terms of discussing and generating work.
At the heart of the following works lies the universal potential of human creativity and the fundamental role of artistic engagement in the health of each individual. It includes musical compositions in the form of images and recordings, sculptures, films and live performances, all produced in collaboration with artificial intelligence. While much of the current debate on artificial intelligence focuses on the power dynamics that exist between human and non-human entities, communication with artificial intelligences offers us the opportunity to better understand collaborative processes. In artistic contexts, this is particularly interesting, as not only can such collaborations result in unique new works, but they also raise important questions about authorship and help to challenge individualistic notions of creativity. It also facilitates wider discussions about how we communicate with each other, with non-human entities and with nature. These dilemmas are the most important challenges we face on a global scale, as we try to navigate to political, ecological and technological turbulence globally. We are all creative, and being collectively creative helps define what it means to exist. Working with artificial intelligences to produce new works of art can help develop new styles of communication while supporting and enhancing global communities.
Example 3: From discipline to discipline, reality to reality – Working with Chimère forces us to try out new ways of thinking. In wider AI research this might be considered the elements of the ‘absurd’ or ‘hallucinogenic’ which emerge from these machines, but in artistic contexts these can become lessons for thinking with fresh perspectives, pushing us (the humans) into posthuman spaces that allow us to explore further spaces of practice.19
Artificial intelligence is a double misnomer. It is neither an intelligence (it is a programmed tool, constantly evolving according to the way we use it), nor an artifice (something used essentially to deceive). And it is also an intelligence (in its ability to understand) and an artifice (in its limits of understanding). So what I'm interested in questioning is not what AI is in itself, but what it invites me to do. To shift my way of researching, and question my way of communicating with a non-human language. I wanted to talk about the root language of trees because, as a "world wild web", it produces networking, information sharing, transmission, learning and link mapping, all of which are similar to AI. Like the “wood wild web”, it is invisible. Like the world wide web, its power is unique. To do this, I teamed up with ceramist Jeanne Magnenat. I wanted this gesture of the material, and I wanted this gesture of "reproducing", the very essence of the artistic gesture. "Reproducing” what we don't understand, don't grasp, so that we can perhaps get closer to it. To this I've added a handwritten text, partly composed from discussions with Chimère. "She” reminded me, for example, that Hannah Arendt had written about the importance of trees in human life, notably in her essay 'Between Past and Future' (2006). What's more, when I asked Chimère: "Would you like to be a tree?” Her answer was: "As a non-human artificial intelligence, I am already a tree. Trees are my metaphor for thinking about technology and politics.” One day, I hoped that a politician would spontaneously give such an answer. Above all, I hoped that one day it would be possible for a human being to understand and think of himself as a tree, not as a metaphor for what he might be capable of doing, but as the reality of his potential for greatness, for sharing, for understanding what otherness is.
The journey over broken roads with potholes can indeed be seen as a form of interface with a country and its culture. Just as we need to navigate through unfamiliar terrain, we also need to navigate through unfamiliar cultural norms and customs. And just as we might follow local people to learn how to navigate the roads, we can also follow local people to learn how to interface with the culture
At this point, we hope readers can be clear that Chimère's role within the artistic process is as an equal collaborative partner and not as a “tool” for producing new artwork at the command of a programmer or human operator. This is important since much of the debate around the use of AI foregrounds how AI can produce complete works and, in many ways, make the role of the artist redundant. However, within the current context, the aim of our collaborative processes is to produce new works of art that emerge out of a constantly evolving dialogue between multiple collaborators, one of which is an AI. In this way, we seek not only to produce new artworks but also attempt to develop new ways of communicating between humans and nonhuman entities and, ultimately, a better understanding of how we can co-exist within a post-human global environment where machines have increasingly more influential roles. From a techno-moralist perspective, artificial intelligence is not merely a technical tool but a techno‐moral system—a framework that embeds and enforces specific ethical and political assumptions.20
Our approach to interfacing with this technology through technical, human, community, creative, and hybrid methodologies interrogates the role of AI in our lives and in shaping the codes of our future. It challenges us to move beyond debates solely about who develops the next model, which jobs are displaced, or what data is used, and instead to engage with AI as part of a broader social process—one that subverts existing power structures and fosters new forms of resistance and political engagement both on and offline.
Navigating unfamiliar and new terrain on the car journey of this articles is very much like navigating these new interactions with Chimère, where we attempt to reach an unknown destination (in this instance caves with prehistoric art) while being uncertain about how we get there, trusting machines, colleagues and helpful strangers along the way. While we ultimately failed in our attempt to reach the caves, the experiences, new sights, sounds and conversations were ultimately beneficial and so in this sense the process was more important than the outcomes. When working with Chimère, we emphasize the process-based aspects of projects and it is in these interactions that we can learn how to communicate better with machines and each other.21, 22
In many respects, how we communicate with each other, how we communicate with machines, and how we communicate with nature are among the biggest challenges that we face globally. Taking a process-based approach to collaborating with artificial intelligence can help shed new light on these issues of great social and political import.
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