Installation – factory house

Exoplanètes

factory house — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 13:49:15 +0000

Work in progress…

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Protest Chair

factory house — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 13:28:53 +0000

Sketch for a protest banner that folds into a chair. Work in progress…

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Avolition

factory house — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 20:07:58 +0000

Avolition is a sound installation consisting of two computers “speaking” to each other. Both run a custom software derived from ELIZA – a primitive natural language processing software developed in the late 1960s. In the fields of computer science and linguistics, natural language processing (NLP) is concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) language. One of the goals of NLP has been to make computers as intelligent as people. Historically, ELIZA was one of the first pieces of software to successfully simulate human-like responses from a computer. It is an interactive program which requires user’s text input. Its response is based on logical syntax calculations done with the text inputted, attempting to demonstrate back to the user its ‘understanding’ of the theme of the conversation. It demonstrates this understanding by responding with a question, closely resembling one that a psychoanalyst would ask. This method develops a ‘mirror style’ conversation in which ELIZA encourages the user to do essentially all the talking – exposing and concurrently analysing their own personal problems. This process is an efficient way of disguising ELIZA’s true artificial nature for longer.

The setup is quite different in Avolition: there is no human (text) input – as one ELIZA interacts with another ELIZA directly. The listener eavesdrops on a strange conversation between the two programs as they try to investigate each other’s “problems”. They are constantly generating a new response and the dialogue is endless.

The audio that you hear is a live recording of the sound installation done in Cabot Square in Canary Wharf, London in 2010.

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Meias Ideias

factory house — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 17:22:00 +0000

Meias Ideias (Half Ideas) is a large scale sculpture yet to be done. Here is a maquette of the piece.

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Seed / Fruit Exchange

factory house — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 11:54:00 +0000

We spend time with our friends: they invite us to their homes and offer us aperitifs, food, snacks and of course their invaluable company.
In the meantime we “steal” the odd fruit, vegetable or grain without them knowing and take it back home. We then remove the seeds, dry them and plant them. When they become mature and well rooted plants we offer them back to the friend from which we stole the seed in the first place. So far we have successfully “exchanged” goji berry, lemon, physalis, pear, tomato, ginger and quinoa. We failed twice with both kiwi and avocado. Currently growing passion-fruit and courgette to exchange.

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Next Customer Bar

factory house — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 19:41:04 +0000

We incorporated an LED matrix display into a next customer bar – a small hand-held bar used in most supermarket checkout belts to distinguish queuing customers’ groceries. Next Customer Bar consists of a molded acrylic casing which houses thin LED displays on both sides of the bar. The scrolling text is based on cues prepared for television advertising. These cues are very clear and concise instructions which describe scenes and actions performed by actors for TV commercials. In between actions there is also a set of vocabulary used to identify cues for camera positions and movements (such as “slow pan”, “close up” and “long shot”). The scripts displayed do not make any reference to a specific brand but instead aim at presenting archetypal and somehow familiar scenes and actions that are commonly used when producing commercials.

The display of these cues within a retail environment acts as a provocation, encouraging the passer-by to find alternative meanings and modes of framing their current condition of “consumer”.

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Global Warming

factory house — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:37:04 +0000

In Global Warming, the trail of pee hitting on the urinal is recorded and used to control the navigation of a 3D globe, leaving a trace of thousands of Google Earth place markers on its surface.The spectator’s action is reminiscent of ‘spraying’, the animal behaviour of identifying and marking territory. Global Warming is an ironic take on how primitive territorial instincts can be exercised through supposedly intelligent and networked devices and at the same time disguised by them.

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