MIRA (Mega Intelligent Robot Artist) is an art piece by AI&I artgroup that we presented at Burning Man 2023-2025 and unSCruz 2024. Here I will show you the evolution of the project with some comments. You'll first see the art statement, then the result, the art MIRA created and some of my process images and notes. Let's start in 2023.

A couple of blog posts about MIRA:
https://alionakuznetsova.com/burning-man-2025/
https://alionakuznetsova.com/mira-2/

In 2023, AI art just became available through Midjourney, and the creation of it (and calling it art) brought about a lot of heated discussions. So our idea was two-fold: to gift the community the ability to play with AI-generated art and to create a cute, very approachable robot artist to see if it would change people's perceptions (in fact, it did, greatly). It was our first year on Playa, and we made a lot of rookie mistakes. For example, we had no idea how hard the Playa soil is and almost broke out anthena while trying to install. Also, of course, it was a MudMan year, so rain and mud eventually broke the electronics.

As for the textile part, I had this coat with hundreds of buttons that I once made for another shoot, and I decided to add small pockets for some of them. We left small gifts in them, which took on a life of their own when people would replace what they took with something else. In addition, I decided to make Japanese-style patches from the same textile for her pants. And of course, colorful yellow hair became MIRA's signature.

In 2024, we wanted to focus on belonging, aiming to strike a balance between fitting into the community and staying authentic. As first-generation immigrants, we both had a lot to say on this topic.

On my part, I wanted to use classic knitting and embroidery techniques, but work with robotic materials like wire, found objects, and microscopes. I also hid many messages throughout MIRA's outfit, written in binary code. This time, we also added a special diary that told MIRA's story, included a detailed technical description for more engineering-minded people, and featured some ink work in black and bronze metallic inks.

In 2024, over 1500 people have interacted with MIRA throughout the event!

In 2025, we turned our focus from MIRA to the audience. In previous years, many people asked MIRA to take their picture. So this time, V. came up with and implemented a Magic Photo (see below) - a stylized portrait with a funny background. The trick was that MIRA would only take a photo if a viewer did something funny, so people had lots of fun bringing unexpected props, making faces, dancing and having a good time.

To match this new idea, on my end, I used colors and shapes to make MIRA look funnier and weirder, so people would feel at ease. I used colors from the desert sunset and a lot of white to make her look light and flowing. I also played with knitted shapes and colorful artwork in the diary.

Interestingly, the AI landscape in general changed significantly. There were now several AI art pieces, and many were very impressive. What's next for the AI&I project? You'll find out soon 😄