Charles Sandison Illuminates The Oracle With AI

Finland-based British artist Charles Sandison doesn’t just work with light and language – he composes with code. Long before digital art became fashionable, he was programming a Sinclair ZX81 computer in the remote north of Scotland in the early ’80s, teaching himself to code at age 12, while drawing and painting as his primary way of expressing himself. At a time when computers were alien to most households and new media was scarcely taught in art schools, Sandison forged his own hybrid language of software and symbolism. His breakthrough came in 2001 at the Venice Biennale, and since then, his computer-generated video projections have illuminated the Catacombs of Paris, the facade of the Oslo Opera House and museums across the world.

Sandison’s latest – and perhaps most profound – work, “The Garden of Pythia”, is nestled on the ancient slopes of Delphi, Greece, at Pi, Global Center for Circular Economy and Culture. Commissioned by the Polygreen Culture & Art Initiative (PCAI), an organization merging culture and ecology founded by Greek entrepreneur Athanasios Polychronopoulos, the installation draws a poetic parallel between today’s artificial intelligence and the 8th-century B.C. Oracle of Delphi known as Pythia. Powered by AI-driven code and projected onto the hillside, the work pulses with ancient texts, fragments of Delphic statues, digital symbols and environmental data. For Sandison, it marks his deepest engagement yet with AI, blending myth, code and memory into a living landscape.

Kika Kyriakakou, PCAI Artistic Director, says, “Sandison’s new work echoes in the most refined manner PCAI’s environmental mission and our dedication to contemporary art. We are pleased to have commissioned this immersive, real-time computer-generated installation that exemplifies Sandison’s sculptural approach towards moving image and information technology, along with his deep concern for nature protection, human and non-human communication and cultural heritage.” Sandison speaks about growing up in the Scottish Highlands, coding as a creative language and his latest project, “The Garden of Pythia”.

You originally planned to move to Berlin. How did you end up in Finland instead?

I studied at the Glasgow School of Art in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and even taught there briefly. In 1995, I was planning to move to Berlin to set up a studio. I felt I’d been in Glasgow long enough and wanted to see what life in Berlin might offer. On the way, I had a short detour for an exhibition in Finland – just two weeks, I thought. That was 30 years ago. I’m still there. I guess I’m someone drawn to northern places. Wherever you find a “north”, give a shout – Charles will probably be up a mountain somewhere, messing about with projectors and code. That’s my thing.

What was your early relationship with technology like?

I grew up in a remote part of northern Scotland. My parents were a bit hippie-ish and believed isolation was good for the soul. If it doesn’t drive you mad, you find ways to occupy yourself. In the early ’80s, home microcomputers – 8-bit machines – started appearing. My best friend from age 12 until I left for art school was a little Sinclair ZX81. I taught myself to code. At the same time, I was always drawing and painting. Those were my first ways of speaking to the world.

How did you connect art and code as one language?

It was around that time a light bulb went off in my head: painting, drawing and writing computer code – they’re the same thing to me. That realization shaped my artistic practice for years.

What made you shift from museum installations to more site-specific, outdoor work?

My early installations were mostly in “white cube” galleries. But after years of traveling and installing work in the same kind of museum spaces, I realized I wasn’t that interested in those interiors. I began making peripheral works – sketches of a kind, using light and code – in sites around the world. In Rome, for example, while installing work at the MAXXI Museum, I asked to access the Farnese Gardens by night so I could experiment with projections. If you work with digital art, you can’t just pull out a sketchbook. You have to invent new ways to sketch using light and code. I’ve done that in the Catacombs of Paris, on the mountainside outside Seoul, and very quickly, those peripheral works became more interesting to me than the museum shows.

How did “The Garden of Pythia” come about?

The project really began in 2020 with a show at Bernier/Eliades in Athens – right in a small window between lockdowns. One of the very few people who saw it was Athanasios Polychronopoulos. He came up to me and said, “I’ve got a place I think you’d be interested in.” And that was the beginning. We kept talking over the years, ping-ponging ideas, until we finally got to the business of installing the work here. Being in Delphi feels natural to me. It reminds me of the small, remote communities I grew up in – places where the past and present collide, where survival is pragmatic, but history lives in the landscape.

What was it like working on-site at Delphi?

I can only work at night. My installations don’t come alive until the sun goes down. So over the last few visits, I’ve spent my nights up on the hillside, just me, computers, code and light. My wife said it looked like Frankenstein’s mountain lab – sparks flashing in the dark. But it’s in those moments, alone in the landscape, that everything connects. That’s when the work really happens.

You’ve spoken about using AI in your work. How do you see your role as an artist engaging with such advanced technologies?

I’m not evangelistic about AI. I don’t think every artist needs to use it. But I happen to have been born at a time with a certain skill set that lets me dive deep into the mechanics of AI and computer code. If you have that ability as an artist, I think it’s important to engage with it, understand it and even shape it. I’ve visited places like Google Labs in London and spoken with engineers – people building this landscape. Most of the public doesn’t really know what AI is or how it works. I feel like my role isn’t to explain it technically, but to act as an intermediary. I’m not giving an education – I’m offering an experience. For me, it’s like a transfer of experience, similar to how a painting silently communicates in a museum. That’s what I try to do with AI in my work. And really, the model of AI is much older than we think. It began in places like the Temple of Apollo with the Oracle of Delphi. Pilgrims would come from all over the known world, bringing questions: Should we marry? Go to war? They’d climb the hill, present their offerings and receive a cryptic answer from behind a screen. That was a kind of machine intelligence too – a biomythic one, but artificial nonetheless. It’s fascinating how that structure echoes in the way we interact with AI today.