Demers and Vorn invite the visitors to enter the simulated world of "Scavengers" and to consider a robotic ecosystem. The robotic species are adapted to their behaviors in the habitat and at the same time are a metaphor for natural societies. There are parasites, scavengers, herds etc.

The installations are deployed in dark hazy spaces, in unusual architectural sites where the viewer is invited to consider an invented habitat created solely for the robot organisms. Each installation replicates elementary robot-organisms, thereby building a fictitious society or robotic ecosystem. By experiencing these environments with the entire body, immersed in this simulated world, the audience is more convinced of the simulacra.

No Man's Land

Through various robotic species, "No Man's Land" especially "The Scavengers" evokes fictitious behaviors of an even larger robotic ecosystem. Here the robot-organisms are replicated in number and also in gender. The robotic genders are designed on the basis of their behaviors in the habitat, and there are metaphors of natural societies: parasites, scavengers, overpopulation, flocks, etc. The machines are reduced to their most nominal expression to implement their intended behaviors. A simple hammer machine becomes a rhythmic element at the same time and a parasite when installed judiciously on another robot-organism. The behaviors are seen as a common thread for the design of each of the robot-organisms. Here we present our interpretation of these domains in respect to our intentions of producing an aesthetic media out of machines.

Real Artificial Life as Invented Robotic Ecosystems

Real artificial life is robotics. The hyperreal simulacra of the robot world goes beyond the unreachable simulation of life on a computer screen. Robots are not only a virtual model (a pattern in space and time) but also a dynamic and evolving phenomenon embodied in matter.

As far as we can observe in the architecture of living things, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. In "Out of Control", Kevin Kelly wrote: "An ecology of machines enhances the limited skills of dumb machines." Following this assumption, the installations evoke fictitious behaviors of a global robotic ecosystem through local interactions of minimal mechanical organisms. The underlying design of the whole system (an organism of organisms) is then based on the characteristics of natural societies' behaviors: chain reactions, propagation and aggregation behavior, herds and swarms, etc.

The machines can then be seen as virtual organisms that move and produce sound and light as the output of their invented metabolisms. In this sense, we do not intend to simulate or physically reproduce real life animals, but rather we deal with simplistic behaviors engendered by primitive mechanical animats. This metaphor feeds on the organic sounds and movements in order to create a hybrid world between nature and the artificial.

Our installations are about displacement of existing artifacts and expected life-like behaviors. Our own perception of natural behaviors is imposed on a society of mechanical, audio and visual elements.

The concept of replication is fundamental to these projects, which involve a large number of machine-organisms. Ecosystems are obviously based on population (gender and number), and their complexity is obtained from the multiplicity of the inherent interactions. Furthermore, the illusion of life would not be as convincing if there were only a few units, limiting the combinations of possible states of the system which are consequently perceived as behaviors.

Hypnotic and repetitive movement are easily foreseen with these machines. The kinetic art itself suggests that real (as opposed to virtual) movement generates a response in us and that any movement outside our body is hypnotic. Rituals, hierarchy, chaos, aggregation, the collective versus the individual, are among the potential behaviors addressed by the installations.

We can suggest that no prerequisite or imposed equivalence exists across the boundaries of life and its machine represenation. Since one of the forefront aesthetic choices of these works is the evocation of life through an abstract, even displaced, bare inorganic skeleton, the machines are kept deliberately simplistic. Shapes move from primitive abstract objects (spheres, cylinders, sound, light) to kinetic and complex organisms (polymorphic patterns).

The installations also convey a displacement of sensations, perceptions and expectations: duality, ambiguity and contradiction are part of the sculptures. The aesthetics of the societies are continuously in conflict when they are not animated. For instance, if the objects are lying still in a particular pattern, the viewer perceives the specific image of this pattern. As they move and react, the initial perception is destroyed. What was first seen as the external inert perception, the known experience of the objects, is continuously transformed.

Behaviors - No Man's Land

In the "No Man's Land" installation, the robot- organisms' species are classified by their shapes, functions and behaviors. One out of the indicative list of targeted behaviors is: "Scavengers" seem to fight for a large chunk of a dead animat; they are large and make a lot of noise. The dead animat is depicted by a steel cube (2' x 2' x 2') simultaneously pushed around by four pneumatic actuators. The scraping surfaces of the cube and the floor will generate a uncomfortable rhythmic pitch. Light sources are embedded into the cube to underline sudden movements of the cube and the scavengers.

Through these installations, we pursue our research on intelligent environments and life embodiment into matter. We intend to present robotic machines not as specialized and virtuoso automata, but rather as expressive artworks. We also explore the reformulation of sound and light applications by simulating metabolism functions and by creating dynamic virtual architectures. In fact, real artificial life is more than an immersive media, it is a world of its own.