Autopoiesis

Autopoiesis

Production country: 
us
Edition: 
2002
Format: 
installation
Autopoiesis by Kenneth Rinaldo. Scan from the transmediale.02 program booklet.

Humans continuously navigate through life and the environment, without constantly realising their actions as a chain of conscious and unconscious decisions. Rinaldo’s installation Autopoiesis invites the visitor to reflect on both levels of decision by inducing robotic sculptures to develop their own, artificial ‘life, seemingly related to human behavior. An intense communication between visitor and sculpture is generated, a complex web of action and reaction on both sides, the human and the technical. Autopoiesis consists of ten musical robotic sculptures, interacting with the audience and incessantly adapting their behavior in response to the visitor’s reaction. The notion of “Autopoiesis”, as defined and developed by Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana, describes “self-creation”- characteristic for all living systems and suggestive of the artificial intelligence contained within the installation. Lipstick cameras and infrared sensors, mounted in the fragile sculptures made of Cabernet-Sauvignon-vines and polyurethane-joints, record the presence of a visitor. The sculptures react on position of and activity by the viewer, while also including the perceptions and reactions of the other sculptures by implementing a built-in group- consciousness. The group of robot sculptures communicates amongst each other by an electric wire system and audible telephone beeps, representing a kind of musical language. Together with the audience, they create a unique audio­visual concert of reaction and counter-reaction, totally non-reproducible and endlessly variable.

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