Description

RED LIGHT is an interactive robotic environment which aims to question, reformulate and subvert the notions of behavior, projection and empathy that usually characterize the relationship between human beings and machines. Red Light is a following in my artistic practice about creating artificial worlds. This project evokes a certain "deviance of the machines" as it would exist in the hottest areas of a fictive world populated exclusively by these cybernetic creatures. This installation project also explores techniques and technologies related to parallel robotics and to pneumatics with the construction of home-made pneumatic muscles.

Eight machines react to the presence of viewers by generating sound and light and by moving their body in a very organic but unusual way. Each robot is an assembly of four segments joined by twelve McKibben actuators (air muscles). Six machines are hanging from the ceiling and two machines are convulsing on the floor.

The artificial characters in the Red Light environment are complex machines that could generate a wide number of possible behaviors. These behaviors are also adaptive in response to what the machines perceive and the way viewers decide to interact with them: by touching the robots, by moving around them, by simply standing in front of these untamed tentacles. The title of this installation project evokes a particular situation/context where the actors are expressing themselves through unpredictable behaviors that may seem completely wild or crazy, where the interpretation of these behaviors may even lead to believe in their own true existence. Red Light is a place where the human qualities of the machine and the machinic nature of man are intermixed and become blurred.

Exhibitions

• Soft Metal, Centre des arts d'Enghien-les-Bains
(Enghien-les-Bains, France)
From January 22 to March 23, 2014

• Wood Street Galleries
(Pittsburgh, USA)
From April 29 to June 19, 2011

• Le Labo
(Toronto, Canada)
October 2 to 23, 2010

• FOFA Gallery
(Montreal, Canada)
From January 11 to February 9, 2007

Documentation

High Resolution Pictures

		Red Light in the Hexagram Black Box RedLight01.tif.zip, 10.7 MB, TIFF format, 300 dpi, 3008 x 2000
		Red Light in the Hexagram Black Box RedLight02.tif.zip, 8.4 MB, TIFF format, 300 dpi, 3008 x 2000

QuickTime Video

Red Light in the Hexagram Black Box RedLight.mov, 490.3 MB, QuickTime format (DV), 720 x 480, 2:15 min.

YouTube Video

 

Red Light in the Hexagram Black Box

Red Light

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