commisioned and produced by Laboratoria Art & Science Foundation
in partnership with Kaspersky Lab

In the posthuman world of the near future, two surgical lamps transformed into robotic cybernetic creatures move, speak, murmur, and discuss with each other. Borgy (from Cyborg) and Bes (from Demons, or Bésy, in Russian, a novel by Dostoevsky) discuss publications they find on the social networks and online news feeds, interpreting them in the language of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

Borgy&Bes refers to the characters of Dostoevsky’s Demons, especially Alexei Kirillov. In the novel, the engineer Kirillov conducts a fatal experiment to prove the existence of free will, committing suicide. In this project, he practically returns to life in schizophrenic form in Borgy and Bes, continuing the struggle for his ideals of freedom, autonomy, identity and the search for oneself. As a virtual being, this updated Kirillov instinctively feels that, according to Schopenhauer, a man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants. The digital networks furnish him data with which he becomes increasingly more entangled. Dostoevsky’s questionings about the changes in society and in the individual acquire a new reality. The revolutionary impetus is no longer rooted in a human conspiracy, but in a “machinic” one. Borgy&Bes leads us to a world where science and technology spring from deep-set desires and become our destiny.

Borgy&Bes is not interested in direct communication with people. Instead, the work dissects human behavior and communication. It takes a look at human culture from a distance and studies the world like an alien. It questions and interprets information and news to understand the world. The surgical lamps illuminate not the physical body on a surgical table, but the social body of a society in a network.

The specially trained artificial neural network controls the verbal behavior of Borgy and Bes, synthesizes their voices and controls the choreography. Together with neuroscientists and robot technicians, the artist developed digital characters that change with time. Borgy and Bes feed off information and processes a metabolism of data based on the specific reactions that arise, such as curiosity, suspicion or irony, in relation to human civilization. Their behavior is a reaction to the online data, which spurs the creatures to talk or remain silent.

The borders between artificial intelligence and humans are disappearing. The installation reveals a scenario of digital demons animated by data processes that point to a fast-approaching future in which not only do we communicate with artificial intelligences, but the artificial intelligences also communicate with each other.

Project team Laboratoria Art & Science Foundation
Curator Daria Parkhomenko
Neural networks and deep learning iPavlov and MIPT
Team leader Mikhail Butrsev
Stylization of text Ivan Skorohodov
Robotic engineering NRC “Kurchatov Institute”
Team leader Valery Karpov
Mechatronics Ivan Abaimov
Backend programming Anna Egorova and Maxim Poletaev
Technician Dmitry Sokolov