Notes
Andreas Muxel’s work ‘Connect’ is a feedback driven system that shows the behavior of self-organization. The system produces complex behavior, although its structure and rules are very simple. The Kinetic Sculpture by Art & Com is completely choreographed. It creates an impression of natural behavior but it is very linear. You can always expect the result of such a design.
Yonchul Kim’s kinetic sculptures are very impressive in the way they show certain materials and the potential for using these materials visually. The materials, metamaterials (artificially structured material that exhibits extraordinary electromagnetic properties not available or not easily obtainable in nature) and mechanisms he uses kind of turns into a single abstract form in irrational way. They look like abstract science fiction objects. For me, it is hard to predict the intention of his works but they involve a sense of self management. His early work ‘Hello world’ reminds Alan Turing’s vacuum tube computer. The long copper tube acts as analog memory storage for sound and turns back to the computer. Sound circulates around this closed system. Environmental noise in the gallery may prevent the machine from achieving its task but at the same time, it may lead to unpredictable interesting result.
Ralf Baecker’s Autonomous System series (from 2006 to 2018) including his recent work are complex systems showing self-organization and emergent behavior. Each system in the series has different collective behavior (generally non-hierarchical) which calls Andrew Pickering’s term ‘dance of agency’. The components in the “Putting the Pieces Back Together Again” is made of 1250 agents (stepper motor equipped with a pointer) which can interfere with one another consequentially. When one pointer touches the other it stops and turns to other direction. They interfere performatively with each other, they respond and some point reach the ‘equilibrium’. The system form spontaneous pattern and it constantly evolves new forms on the surface. Maybe they are not very reliable machines… but these machines define the outcome of the process as behavior (in Pickering’s terms). Baecker’s works reminds Ross Ashby’s Homeostat which also tries to establish a hyper stable equilibrium. Verena Friedrich’s works make me sad because even she carefully builds the optimum suitable environments to prolong the lifetime of a candle or soap bubble, they eventually die.
(will be updated)