“Symphony 37: Portrait of an Algorithm”: Giorgos Drivas’ peripatetic action in unseen spaces of the Athens Concert Hall

From a sealed basement of the Megaron building, to a hidden corridor, a stage-props storage room, and finally the ballet rehearsal studio, the action unfolds fragmentarily as a textual and musical chat/conversation between the artist and AI

On Saturday, January 10, 2026, the peripatetic action by Giorgos Drivas, titled “Symphony 37: Portrait of an Algorithm,” opens under the curatorship of Anna Kafetsi, as part of the visual arts program of annexM. Under her direction, annexM operates as an experimental artistic and curatorial project at the Athens Concert Hall, promoting collaborations between music and visual arts in non-conventional, alternative spaces.

The distinguished artist Giorgos Drivas, invited as ResidentM for 2025, has created a peripatetic action/exhibition of dialogical character, involving sound, silence, digital text, video, music, and performance in non-public, unseen spaces of the Megaron. The concept of the action is based on a series of extended conversations between the artist and specialized Artificial Intelligence models. Beginning with the initial question, “What kind of music would you be, if you were music?” and the immediate answer, “A symphonic piece,” Drivas initiates an idiosyncratic interaction with AI models, aiming at the composition, production, and live presentation of this symphony under the title Symphony 37. The artist seeks to reverse the usual terms of our interaction with AI: rather than asking it to create music for him, he asks it to provide him with complete and precise instructions so that he may compose and perform the music that it would like.

From a sealed basement of the Megaron building, to a hidden corridor, a stage-props storage room, and finally the ballet rehearsal studio, the action unfolds fragmentarily as a textual and musical chat/conversation between the artist and AI, while simultaneously functioning as a production under its full and continuous guidance, on the condition of the most faithful possible clarification and adherence to its musical instructions. Each space has been jointly selected and symbolizes a different stage of development-not only of the symphony itself but also of the mode of operation of AI and, by extension, its relationship with the human creator. The action begins in an empty, inhospitable space as something unknown and unexplored, with corresponding initial musical proposals, and gradually moves toward the first refined musical steps-suggestions, their progressive maturation, and finally the completion and first overall presentation of the results in the form of a general rehearsal.

Symphony 37 is presented live in each space, based on the orchestration and visualization proposed by the AI, accompanied by eight musicians under the musical direction of composer Melina Paxinou, who completed the final composition of the work. The title derives from Move 37 in the game Go-a legendary move by the software AlphaGo during its second match against the world champion-which most top players and commentators initially failed to understand or believed to be a mistake, but which proved to be absolutely correct.

“In the post-Anthropocene 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 significant as ourselves. AI, having absorbed both our virtues and our flaws, begins to develop along familiar or unfamiliar paths, to influence us and likely to change us through continuous interaction. AI is not simply a human product; it is inevitably a constantly reconfigured version of ourselves-and what it ultimately makes us question is what kind of people we want and are able to be.”

ResidentM

Within the framework of annexM, the interdisciplinary annual residency program ResidentM was designed for visual artists. The research phase of the residency includes visits to the Megaron’s architectural and musical infrastructures and artistic archives, as well as contacts and collaborations with its human resources (orchestras, choirs, musicians, technicians, producers, etc.), with the aim of producing a new work and presenting it publicly.