annex M: George Drivas – Symphony 37: Portrait of an Algorithm

Distinguished artist George Drivas, ResidentM guest for 2025, has created a walking art -action/exhibition of a dialogical nature with sounds, digital text, video, music, and performance in non-public, unseen areas of the Megaron.

The idea for the action is based on a series of extensive discussions between the artist and Artificial Intelligence models. With the initial question “What kind of music would you be if you were music?” and the immediate response “A musical symphony,” Drivas initiates a unique interaction with AI models with the aim of composing, producing, and live performing this symphony under the title Symphony 37. The artist wishes to reverse the terms under which we usually interact with AI. He does not ask it to create music for him, but to provide him with complete and precise instructions in order to compose and perform the music that AI would like.

From a closed basement of the Megaron building, to a hidden corridor, to a prop warehouse, and finally to the ballet rehearsal room, the action unfolds fragmentarily as a textual and musical chat/conversation between the artist and AI, and at the same time as a production under its complete and continuous guidance, and on the condition of the most faithful clarification and observance of its musical instructions. Each space has been chosen jointly and symbolizes a different stage of development, not only of the symphony but also of the way AI operates and, by extension, its relationship with the human creator. The action begins in an empty, inhospitable space as something unknown and unexplored, with the corresponding first musical suggestions, and slowly progresses to the first improved musical steps-suggestions, their gradual maturation, and finally to completion and the first overall presentation of the results in the form of a general rehearsal.

Symphony 37 is performed live in each venue based on the orchestration and visualisation proposed by AI and accompanied by eight musicians under the musical direction of composer Melina Paxinou, who completed the final composition of the work. The title comes from Move 37 in the Chinese game of Go, a legendary move by the AlphaGo software in a game against the world champion, which most of the top players and commentators watching, did not understand at all or initially believed to be a mistake, but which proved to be absolutely correct.

“In the post-human era,” notes Drivas, “the challenge is to see ourselves as part of a whole, as part of a collaboration with one or many ‘others’, as parents who must accept our creations as equally important as ourselves. AI, having taken all our good and bad characteristics, begins to develop in familiar or unfamiliar ways, influencing us and possibly changing us in a constant interaction with it. It is not just a human product, it is inevitably a constantly reshaped version of ourselves, and what ultimately makes us wonder is what kind of people we want, can and will be with it.