This processual work explores the spatial behaviour of a line the character and appearance of which is the direct consequence of the translation of rudimentary physical reactions of living organisms into a digital file. The subtle form of the black moveable line in the space from direct line to curve is transformed as a visual consequence of communication among the components of a system that reacts when its space is defined in relation to another.
The installation is driven by a system of micro-controllers, electric motors, pulleys and cogs that with a steel hawser and weights change the position of a polyester webbing strip in the space. Its movement is determined by a hermetic and tense system responsible for the processing of information and its simultaneous physical interpretation in the space.
Focused on the proxemic factors characteristic of living organisms, the work takes into consideration the borders of territoriality, for intimate, personal, social and public space, reducing them to practically animal reactions – flight, attack, curiosity, relaxation or acquiescence.
The almost imperceptible line continually communicates non-verbally and explores what in the visual field the impulse that outlines the perceptive possibilities of inanimate tissue looks like. But translation into an algorithmic code, the installation on the basis of the combinations input, creates a verisimilitudinous simulation of the understanding of human reactions from the machine perspective. By its own modification and the incessant redefinition of its environment the work occupies the role of moderator between the animate subject and the potential states of an inanimate object.
The very juxtaposition of the reaction of man and electro-mechanical system with which the work plays encourages critical pondering of the Anthropocene, of the world in which people traditionally do not accept the inherent right of other subjects of the ecological system and raises the question how of the contemporary theory of bioethics will address the new actors of our ecological community – machines.
Coproduction: KONTEJNER
Technical associates: Nikola Kukić, Marko Videc
Special thanks to Marijan Sutlović