  Experiential AI is an emerging research field that addresses the challenge of
making AI tangible and explicit, both to fuel cultural experiences for
audiences, and to make AI systems more accessible to human understanding. The
central theme is how artists, scientists and other interdisciplinary actors can
come together to understand and communicate the functionality of AI, ML and
intelligent robots, their limitations, and consequences, through informative
and compelling experiences. It provides an approach and methodology for the
arts and tangible experiences to mediate between impenetrable computer code and
human understanding, making not just AI systems but also their values and
implications more transparent, and therefore accountable. In this paper, we
report on an empirical case study of an experiential AI system designed for
creative data exploration of a user-defined dimension, to enable creators to
gain more creative control over the AI process. We discuss how experiential AI
can increase legibility and agency for artists, and how the arts can provide
creative strategies and methods which can add to the toolbox for human-centred
XAI.
