Subtle Technologies 2003

Bedlam is an exploration of the fracturing, permutation and recombination of identities by computation and telematics. Bedlam is a telematic and teleoperative art installation comprising telerobotics, machine vision, interactive sound and video, with user interaction at each physical site and via the web. Bedlam is an interdisciplinary project which models a novel cultural environment from a complex of emerging technologies including pneumatics and robotics, digital video systems, digital sound and network communication. Bedlam is equal parts play, critique and technological R+D. It offers a critique of academic and popular discourses of cybernetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, 'virtual reality' and 'artificial life'. It also constitutes experimental research in human computer interaction. Bedlam proposes a model of telematic interaction which actively critiques paradigms of computer-human interaction and of VR. We emphasize full-body interaction in which the user, unencumbered by hardware, training or highly symbolic interaction protocols, can drive remote and local systems by the ongoing behaviour of their entire body.

Stèle 01 is an interactive installation integrating sound, robotics and digital video projection. A vaguely humanoid robot statue stands on an aluminum stele, covering its face with its hands. Video images are projected on the stele's surface which is made of numerous revolving plates acting sometimes as screens sometimes as mirrors. When viewers are approaching, the statue removes its hands, open its arms, changes slowly its shape, while on the screen abstract images are evolving in different visual patterns. The funeral stele becomes a theatre for the illusion of life. Inspired by certain mortuary tumbs from Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, this piece aims to evoque the indivisible dichotomy between movement and inertia, man and machine, real and virtual, life and death. Stèle 01 wants to be a reflexion on the human nature of the machine and the profound machinic nature of human kind.

The Hysterical Machines project is part of a larger research program on the Aesthetics of Artificial Behaviours and is very much inspired of a previous work based on the Misery of the Machines (La Cour des Miracles, 1997). It is conceived on the principle of deconstruction, suggesting dysfunctional, absurd and deviant behaviours thru a functional machine. It operates on a dual-level process expressing the paradoxal nature of Artificial Life.

The [Pre] Hysterical 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. Four ultrasound 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 behaviours of this machine engender a multiplicity of interpretations based on single dynamic pattern of events.

Throughout our work in general we do not intend to simulate nor physically reproduce real life animals but we rather deal with simplistic behaviours engendered by primitive mechanical agents. Shapes move from primitive abstract objects (spheres, cylinders, sound, light) to kinetic and complex organisms as polymorphic patterns. We present robotic machines not as specialized and virtuoso automatons but rather as expressive animated artworks. We also explore the reformulation of audiovisual applications by simulating organic and metabolic functions and by creating dynamic virtual architectures.

Biographies
Bill Vorn
Based in Montreal, Bill Vorn teaches Electronic Arts in the Faculty of Fine Arts (Department of Studio Arts) at Concordia University where he is responsible of the A-Lab, a Robotic Art research lab. Since 1992 his work has been presented in many international events, including Ars Electronica, ISEA, DEAF, Sonar, Art Futura, EMAF and Artec.