Displaced and Clusters(the next piece)are pieces that interact with both their audience and the surrounding environment. The behaviors of the sculptures change based on various inputs. Displaced achieves this through sensors installed in the space where it's located, while Clusters geolocate their position, collect air pollution data every three hours, and adjust their speed according to the air pollution levels. Displaced is installed in a living space. The Inhabitants of the space have to be conscious of this mobile object in the middle of the room and interact with it. This creates a simple interaction between the inhabitant, the object, and the architectural space. These interactions become more complex as the sculpture's movements change in response to various inputs from the sensors and data. While making these pieces, I had in mind Gordon Pask’s essays, where he talks about “Architectural Mutualism,” as well as Valentino Braintenberg's and various cyberneticians' works.

Braitenberg was a neurobiologist who documented his experiments with simple machines in his book Vehicles(1986). He does this in order to understand why when the brain has a sensory input on one side of the body, like the right hand, its sensory input is processed on the opposite part of the brain, the left brain. The vehicles are little cars that have sensors that trigger the motors attached to the wheels. He starts his experiments with simple systems. At first, cars have one input sensor that is directly connected to the motors that activate the wheels. He then adds more sensors, complicating the connections of the input sensors to the motor function. After that, he subjected the cars to a simulated version of Darwin's natural selection by trashing the ones that fell off the table and duplicating the ones that did not fall. The addition of many sensors and threshold devices randomizes and complicates the machine's movement when it encounters specific sensory inputs, such as sunlight or odors. They appeared self-sufficient and alive. The cars appeared to get angry, hungry, fall in love, ponder about what to do next, and even show a rudimentary form of memory and logic. What makes the viewer think that these machines have all these animalistic qualities when, in reality, they operate with simple sensors and motors? The viewer evaluates the way the cars move and their interactions with different inputs and objects to deduce the vehicle's actions and the reasons behind them. When the input involves natural elements like sunlight or odors, typically sensed by animals or plants, one instantly perceives these machines as alive and in need of those elements. Through this experiment, Braitenberg showed that a system might be much simpler than it appears on the outside, and our assumptions about characterizing nonliving objects mostly depend on why we believe they move or interact with other objects around them and with each other.

The pieces “Displaced” and “Clusters,” like Beatenberg’s vehicles, react to the environment. They do not yet communicate with each other. I am working on smaller pieces, as you see on the ground at the beginning of the portfolio that will communicate with each other and displaced. I am curious about how the relationships between the objects will be perceived by the viewer. Also, interested in exploring ways for the new pieces to communicate with the viewer or provide hints about the relationships within the system to the audience.