ISAAK is an interactive installation in which a robot sketches a portrait of each visitor — on paper, in real time, with a hand of its own.
Created by Ditroit in collaboration with ABB, ISAAK explores the increasingly symbiotic relationship between humans and machines. At its core is YuMi, ABB's latest-generation collaborative robot — a cobot designed to safely share space with humans. Here, removed from its traditional industrial identity, YuMi assumes an entirely different role: that of an artistic performer.
Driven in real time by a custom algorithm, ISAAK interprets each visitor's likeness through a personal and expressive visual language. The result is not a mechanical reproduction of reality, but something far more interesting — an interpretive act, in which the robot uses its digital eye to translate perception into an abstract, expressive form. Every portrait is singular. Every line is a decision made by the machine.
The installation raises a question that sits at the heart of our moment: what happens when machines, guided by algorithms, begin to autonomously devise ideas? If a robot can look at a human face and choose how to draw it — developing a style, making aesthetic judgments, producing something that could only be called its own — what does that tell us about the nature of creativity itself?
As Salvatore Giunta of Ditroit reflects: "ISAAK invites us to consider the possibilities and challenges that emerge from the evolution of intelligent devices. If algorithms succeed in understanding and generating ideas, our perception of creativity could be radically transformed."
ISAAK does not position machines as tools of assistance. It positions them as co-creators — integrated into human creative expression, and beginning to develop a language of their own.
