Luc Steels is a pioneer of AI research in Europe since the early 1970s. He founded and directed the AI Laboratory of the University of Brussels (VUB) and the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris. Among his awards is the EURAI distinguished service award, the highest recognition for AI research in Europe. Luc Steels has also engaged intensely with the arts through the curation of exhibitions, cooperation with visual artists, and co-writing a theatre play on a Russian mathematician with Jean-Francois Peyret for the Avignon Theatre Festival (2004) and the theatre Chaillot in Paris (2005). His first (comic) opera Casparo (on the singularity) was performed in Barcelona, Paris, Tokyo and Brussels.