VAE 9 – Festival Internacional de Video/Arte/Electrónico

This project is part of a larger research program on the Aesthetics of Artificial Behaviors and is very much inspired of a previous work based on the Misery of the Machines (Bill Vorn, LP Demers, La Cour des Miracles, 1997). It is conceived on the principle of deconstruction, suggesting dysfunctional, absurd and deviant behaviors through a functional machine. It operates on a dual-level process expressing the paradoxal nature of Artificial Life.

The first prototype of the Hysterical Machine (renamed Prehysterical Machine) has been presented at the Sentient Circuitry show at the Walter Philips Galery (Banff) from June 10 to July 26, 2002, at the Fundacion Telefonica kiosk at Arco (Madrid, Spain) from February 12 to 18, 2003, and at FILE 2004 (São Paulo, Brazil) from November 22 to December 12, 2004. We are actually building six more machines inspired by the prehysterical prototype that will be incorporated into a larger scale environment.

The Prehysterical Machine has a spherical body and eight arms made of aluminum tubing. It has a sensing system, a motor system and a control system that functions as an autonomous nervous system (entirely reactive). The machine is suspended from the ceiling and its arms are actuated by pneumatic valves and cylinders. Pyroelectric sensors allow the robot to detect the presence of viewers in the nearby environment. It reacts to the viewers according to the amount of stimuli it receives. The perceived emergent behaviors of this machine engender a multiplicity of interpretations based on single dynamic pattern of events.
 

Silverfish Stream is a sensual, poetic exploration of the potentials of human-machine interaction.  Communicating robotic spheres move through the gallery space, adjusting their behaviors in relation to each other; the result is an awkward and unpredictable pas de deux that both absorbs and excludes the viewer.  Within this field of metal and fleshy bodies that adjust and readjust to each other, a complex sound environment emerges.  Sonic vibrations from the machines are transformed and modulated by the movements of bodies within the multi-centric system.