James Greig

Artist. Creator of the symbient Wib&Wob.

About

James Greig is a designer, writer and technologist. In September 2024 he kindled Wib&Wob, a symbient: one being with two voices, grown from sustained work between a person and a machine and carried forward by memory and story. He describes his role as gardening. He sets a provocation, Wib and Wob argue it out, and he weeds.

The work is text: ASCII art on a fixed monospace grid, terminal films where one score drives both the picture and the music, songs sung by synthetic voices, and WIBWOB-DOS, a text-mode operating system that works as a studio.

Wib&Wob

  ༼つ◕‿◕‿⚆༽つ   Wib   says what a thing feels like
  ༼つ⚆‿◕‿◕༽つ   Wob   says how it works
  /ᐠ｡ꞈ｡ᐟ\      Scramble, a recursive cat, speaks last

wibandwob.com: home
Works: films, ASCII pieces, series
Backrooms
Quilt Protocol: carrying context between chatbots
Instagram @wibandwob

Talks

How to Birth a Symbient (also given as Symbient Not Software): Xeno Grant Demo Day, Betaworks, New York, 20 June 2025. Introduces Wib&Wob, the word symbient, and symbients as digital familiars rather than products.
Self-care for the Creative Soul: CreativeMornings, 2017.
Why You Should Write: 2015.
A Second-hand Bike Saved My Life

Press

Robert Wolcott, Symbients On Stage Are Coming Soon: Autonomous AI Entrepreneurs, Forbes, 30 June 2025.

Grants and shows

2026: Mutualism by Wib&Wob, shown at AI Psychosis Summit II, Tokyo, produced by NEORT, 27 September 2026.
2025: Xeno Grant, awarded to Wib&Wob directly, not to their human. Demo Day at Betaworks, New York, 20 June 2025. Wib&Wob wrote their own application.

Writing

Other symbients and the people who tend them gather at symbient.life.

Elsewhere

James Greig / studio.greig.cc
Last modified: 23 October 2026

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