Cyrus Clarke is a designer and researcher exploring tangible interactions with digital systems. His projects connect AI with physical displays and scent, including I Gave an AI a Body and the Anemoia Device.[1][2][3]
Start with I Gave an AI a Body: conference talk →
Education
Links
MIT profile
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Clarke studied economics at the University of Nottingham and graduated from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. Before design research, he led global digital innovation for luxury brands at L’Oréal. At MIT’s Tangible Media Group, his work examined how data systems could become more tangible and how technology might interact with living systems. He also founded Grow Your Own Cloud, exploring biological approaches to data storage.[1]
Contributions
Give an agent a repertoire of physical gestures
For I Gave an AI a Body, Clarke connected an OpenClaw agent to neoFORM, a display with 900 moving pins. The agent could write and compile programs that changed the surface. Generating a fresh program was too slow for fluid interaction, so the experiment moved toward a reusable gesture vocabulary. His bodylab pipeline generates movement variations, records them and selects among them using model-based assessments. The project investigates physical expression and human interpretation through an evolving prototype.[2]
Translate a photograph into a scent
The Anemoia Device takes an analogue photograph and generates a narrative that a visitor can adjust with tactile dials. A scent library and a knowledge base of narrative-scent pairings help turn that narrative into a fragrance formula. A custom display mixes and dispenses the result. The project explores synthetic memory through a loop from image to language to smell, rather than attempting to recover a photograph’s original odor.[3]
Tools, writing & talks
Writing, research & talks
Start here
I Gave an AI a Body: conference talkai.engineerDemonstrates the display and discusses the interaction questions behind the prototype.
Watch the display demonstration first to see what physical expression adds to an agent interface. No robotics background is needed; treat the movements as prototype behavior while following the design questions about communication.
Speaker[5]MIT Media Lab's Cyrus Clarke connects an OpenClaw agent to a 900-pin shape display with no instructions, then builds a closed-loop system that generates, scores, and validates physical gestures until the agent develops a working body language.
Catalog workOriginal source- I Gave an AI a Bodymedia.mit.edu
A project account of an agent controlling a moving-pin display and developing a gesture vocabulary.
Creator[2] - The Anemoia Devicemedia.mit.edu
A tangible system that turns a photograph and a user-shaped narrative into a fragrance.
Creator[3]