Ulrike Gabriel
«Terrain 01»

The interactive AL-installation consists of a ‹microcosm› (a bordered-off semicircular, physical space) inhabited by a colony of small robots (dynamic systems) much like autonomous, cybernetic vehicles. The robots are equipped with photocells—and so light becomes the main power source of this system—and sensors, which function like perceptual organs, and which allow them freedom of movement in the microcosm and the ability to perceive the movement and position of others. So movement processes and the movements of the active ‹life› depend entirely on the intensity of the light being projected onto the colony of robots. This intensity responds to an interactive set-up, which creates indirect contact between the external viewer and the robots. A brainwave sensor, placed on the head of the interactant, measures his or her brain activity, which is then sent to the system and controls, in turn, the intensity of the projected light. Through an indirect interface and immaterial form of communication (brain activity), the internal and external world become reciprocal and inverted: the more intense or erratic the viewer’s brain activity, the less light strikes the robots and the more apathetic the behavior of the colony; or the weaker the brain impulses (the more relaxed the viewer), the more chaotic the movements of the robot colony become.
CG