Interventions

The robotic agents are entirely autonomous. While moving on water, they collect, store, and interpret data from various environmental conditions such as water quality, air quality, temperature, ambient light, and sound. For example, an increase in temperature read by one of the agent's sensors may cause it to increase its speed. This behaviour will influence its neighbouring agents, who will then respond by changing their own behaviours. These agents will in turn influence their neighbouring agents, thus creating a ripple effect of actions.

From these simple programmed correlations between the agents, a complex and unpredictable group behaviour will thus emerge. This emergent behaviour will signify unseen characteristics of their immediate milieu. In other words, a group behavior that is specific to the presentation site will emerge from the individual agents' interactions with one another and their local environment. Responding to the hidden features of the urban environment, the agents will offer viewers a new perspective on their local area, providing them opportunities for relating to it in unexpected ways. Furthermore, the simultaneous presence of groups of agents in different locations will allow viewers to make comparisons and create connections between sites.

Isolation. Rejection. Adaptation. Evolution. Things exist because of their limits, their difference, but also especially because of their relation with other things.

Is it the social nature of human that makes loneliness so fascinating? History is made of gatherings, contracts, exchanges and communication. Seclusion from the group makes one weaker and puts him at risk. Nevertheless, isn't there a vital part of our inner self that only asks for a space of solitude?

Absences is a public intervention project that involves electronic objects interacting with nature. Taking shape the frontier of new media and land art, it proposes a meditation on solitude and association, interaction and adaptation, natural and artificial, biological and inanimate.

Each intervention involves different species of objects with specific characteristics:

1. their ability to interact (such as sensors, light-emitting diodes, speakerphones, remote communication via infrared signal or radio antenna)
2. their intentions and needs ("seek light", "avoid noise", "attract insects", "communicate with fellow objects")
3. their strategies and behaviors (parasitism, mutualism, commensalism, cooperation, competition)
4. their complexity (axis reflex, adaptive intelligence, social mechanics)

Accrochages is a urban electronic intervention project by Montreal-based artists Sofian Audry and Samuel St-Aubin. It stems from their will to bring their art practice out of the walls of a gallery space, on the walls of the city itself. The intent is to build small active and autonomous objects that can, through simple means, give new qualities to the city environment by creating different interactive situations.

The project proposes different models of objects. Some of them are produced in large amount, while others are unique. They display different kinds of behaviors through the use of simple sensors and emitters (e.g. light-sensor, distance sensor, microphone, LED, speaker, LED display, etc). Objects produced as part of Accrochages should ultimately be auto-sufficient (ie. able to recharge themselves, with solar panels for instance) and low-cost (we are targeting less than 15 Euros).