Emanuel Gollob

Emanuel Gollob’s Doing Nothing with AI series uses AI, robotics, and brainwaves to continuously choreograph a flow of motions with the intention of making the participant “do nothing” and daydream.

Doing Nothing with AI

Doing Nothing with AI 1.0

2019 / 2025

This robotic installation uses generative robot control, brainwave measurements, and reinforcement learning to optimize its choreography with the aim of making the participant “do nothing.”

Enjoying a moment of inaction and introspection while letting our minds wander and daydream may be more important than constantly keeping us busy with doing something “productive.”

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Shaky Savine & Doing Nothing with AI

2020

Armin Sanayei’s composition Shaky Savine was created to perform in dialogue with Emanuel Gollob’s neuroreactive installation Doing Nothing with AI.

The modular composition gives the interpreter the freedom to improvise based on their perception, while an electroencephalography (EEG) cap streams the musician’s brain activity. Based on this real-time feedback, AI decides the next movements of the installation. The work emerges in the interplay of composition, algorithm, and improvisation.

This musical dialogue between man and machine was recorded by Anna Mitterer. Shaky Savine & Doing Nothing with AI was created in a co-production between the Ensemble Reconsil and REAKTOR.

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The Process

Imagine two people in an exhibition looking at the same sculpture. Even if the shape, context, and time are the same, both will likely develop very different aesthetic emotions. But what if the sculpture targets a particular neuronal outcome–like “doing nothing”?

Doing nothing can be correlated with default-mode brain network activity, an unconscious activity distributed across several brain regions. Whenever we aren’t actively pursuing a task, this brain network starts to reflect our short-term memory with our long-term memory. This updates our environmental and social reference values—an important task.

Doing Nothing with AI is animated by an adapted Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network (DCGAN). The DCGAN generator sequentially generates new robot motions, while the discriminator trains on past motion samples with positive neurofeedback. The number of distinct robot motion choreographies explorable is 255 ^ 256.

The AI-generated motions are performed by a KUKA industrial robot–the same one that fabricated the cloak of Doing Nothing with AI by precisely placing 23.000 colored toothpicks.

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About Emanuel Gollob

Emanuel Gollob (b. 1991, Austria) is an artist and researcher exploring the evolving relationship between humans, artificial intelligence, and robotics. His work aims to create bodily experienceable human-robot encounters that challenge conventional interactions while examining shifts in human perception in the digital age.

Emanuel earned a diploma in Design Investigation from the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He was an artist-in-residence at MindSpaces, an EU research project within the STARTS initiative (2020–2021). Since 2020, he has been a PhD candidate and researcher at the University of Arts Linz.

His work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Smithsonian Arts + Industries Building, Washington, D.C. (2021); Science Gallery Melbourne (2021); ArtScience Museum, Singapore (2022); and Ars Electronica, Linz (2024).

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