Listen to the full interview here.

In the liminal space where technology and art converge, few navigate the terrain with as much intuition and philosophical depth as Vadim Mirgorodskii. As founder and art director of Interactive Items Studio, Mirgorodskii has devoted his career to creating responsive art that transcends traditional boundaries—art that breathes, reacts, and evolves with human interaction.

The Biological Compass of Beauty

“Beauty is a sign for beings which makes something attractive to them,” Mirgorodskii explains, framing aesthetic appreciation through an evolutionary lens. This biological perspective unveils a profound truth: beauty isn’t merely subjective preference but a sophisticated signaling system developed through millennia of evolution.

“If you’re eating something tasty, that’s a kind of sign for your biology that what you’re eating is good for your health,” he elaborates. “In terms of beauty, it’s the same kind of sign that attracts you, that tells you this object is interesting, you have to deal with it.”

This framing—beauty as biological directive—positions our aesthetic sensibilities not as cultural constructs but as survival mechanisms. The red apple attracts us not arbitrarily, but because our biology recognizes its value. The beautiful person draws our attention not by chance, but by design.

The Evolution of an Artist

Mirgorodskii’s journey began, as many profound paths do, in childhood. “I was drawing since my young age,” he recalls. “What was funny was that from a really young age, I was drawing three-dimensional objects. My obsession was to draw a car, but not from the side like a 2D car, but in perspective.”

Born into a family of scientists with a programmer brother, Mirgorodskii describes himself as “a black sheep” in his family’s technical environment. Despite early exposure to programming—his brother even created a simple game engine to entice him—young Vadim felt confined by the rigidity of code.

“Programming created a boundary for my personality,” he reflects. “It was kind of boring at the time. So I just gave it up for more than a decade and was thinking about myself as an artist, much more than any other discipline.”

The path led him through graphic design, 3D graphics, and motion design. Yet something was missing. “I was feeling that motion design is something that has already been done in the most various and beautiful combinations in this world,” he explains. “It’s been fully seen in so many ways already.”

The breakthrough came when he enrolled in an interactive design program. “Since that moment, I felt that I’m in the right place. I can perform on a pretty high level compared with others,” he says. This realization marked not just a career pivot but a harmonious fusion of his artistic sensibilities with the technical world he had once rejected.

Walking the Edge of Systems

Artists exist at the frontier of what we understand—they “walk on the edge of systems and create new order,” as Mirgorodskii puts it. This liminal position explains why creative work is often initially misunderstood; it exists beyond current paradigms.

This boundary-pushing ethos manifests in Mirgorodskii’s work. With “Eidos Machines,” an installation featuring three massive robotic arms, he created a window into Plato’s world of pure ideas—a realm traditionally understood as accessible only to the mind, not to the senses.

“Plato said there is no way to perceive these ideas except straight with your conscience—you cannot see it, you cannot hear it, you cannot feel it. And we said, ‘All right, let’s create a device like a telescope that will enable people to see it with their eyes,’” Mirgorodskii explains.

The installation’s power lies in its contradiction: massive industrial robots serving as conduits to an abstract realm. Viewers control these formidable machines with the simplest of interfaces—a knob that can be rotated clockwise or counterclockwise—creating an intimate connection between human intention and mechanical response.

The Collision of Art and Entrepreneurship

After leaving Russia when the war started, Mirgorodskii spent two years in a small Turkish village, far from the galleries and institutions that had previously showcased his work. This displacement catalyzed a pivot toward product development: digital jewelry that displays art on wearable screens.

The transition thrust him into the often-contradictory worlds of art and entrepreneurship. “One of the main contradictions I faced was between entrepreneurship and the way of an artist,” he observes. “When you are an entrepreneur, you think: how can you help people? What useful thing can you give them? But when you are an artist, you think: what do you find interesting?”

This tension encapsulates the difference between design (purpose-driven) and art (exploration-driven). The entrepreneur looks outward, identifying problems to solve. The artist looks inward, exploring new territories for their own sake.

“As an entrepreneur, you’re literally saying: what could be better in the world? What can I fix? But as an artist, you are exploring yourself,” Mirgorodskii reflects. “The artifacts of art are just a process of self-exploration.”

Navigating the AI Revolution

Like all contemporary artists, Mirgorodskii now faces the seismic shifts brought by artificial intelligence. Rather than resistance, he advocates adaptation.

“I see this trend in fine arts. Impressionism started with the appearing of photography,” he notes. “In the beginning, artists had the function of photographers—you can make a portrait of somebody or draw a landscape. But when there is a photo camera, it’s so easy to achieve, and the portrait will be 100 percent identical to the person.”

This technological disruption forced artists to redefine their purpose. “The need changed. Artists had to change also, and they started the impressionism movement when art was not about still images, but about impression—something that camera cannot take.”

Mirgorodskii sees parallels with today’s AI revolution. “I guess the right way is not to avoid the flow of progress, because you cannot avoid it too long. Eventually, it will overcome you. But to try to emerge into the new flow.”

His recent installation exemplifies this embrace of AI: a responsive system where participants can alter abstract animations simply by speaking words. Say “elephants and balloons” or “Azealia Banks and horses,” and the visuals transform accordingly.

“It’s really great how easily you can change everything with just a thought,” he marvels. “It’s very fascinating how easily it became possible to create visual effects.”

The New Values

As AI reshapes creative possibilities, Mirgorodskii ponders the emerging value system. “What are the new values?” he asks. Just as photography forced painting to redefine itself, AI compels us to reconsider what makes creative work meaningful.

“Alongside the new values are values that are still unbreakable—the ideas that stand behind your work,” he asserts. In an age where AI can generate impressive visuals from simple prompts, the conceptual foundation becomes increasingly crucial.

“With the fluency in creating with AI, whether you have an idea or not is the crucial difference right now,” Mirgorodskii emphasizes. The technical barriers have lowered, placing greater premium on vision and concept.

Looking ahead, Mirgorodskii admits that specific predictions are difficult—”it’s a black box”—but offers one enduring compass: “It’s great for artists to be happy with what they are doing. That’s the checkpoint for where you’re going.”

The Beauty in Fusion

When asked what he finds profoundly beautiful, Mirgorodskii points to the junction between music and visual art. He admires the Japanese art group Nonotak, whose work creates visuals driven by sound using simple shapes and monumental projection installations.

This appreciation echoes Mirgorodskii’s own artistic philosophy: finding beauty in the spaces between disciplines, in the responsive dialogue between human and machine, in the tension between physical presence and abstract concept.

In a world increasingly mediated by technology, Vadim Mirgorodskii reminds us that beauty remains our biological compass—a signal cutting through complexity, guiding us toward what matters. His work doesn’t just engineer beauty; it reveals how beauty engineers. us