D.W.I Clones
Mechatronic installation
2013
Different Ways to Infinity
Focusing on the limits between scientific modelization and reality, theory and perception, the installation plays with different meanings of the endlessness. D.W.I gathers experiments as fictional strategies to generate infinity: The complexity of chaos, the space filling capacity of the rhombic dodecahedron, the replication of motorized mechanical systems as clones, or a machine’s effort to raise a pendulum against gravity. “The ancient alliance has been destroyed; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe’s indifferent immensity out of which he emerged only by chance” (Jacques Monod).
D.W.I Clones
The work D.W.I Clones uses two identical inverted pendulums: based in a motorized mechanical system, the pendulums are mounted with the pivot point on a cart that moves horizontally. This movement makes the pendulum swing, and once the pendulum rotates to its inverted vertical point, an algorithm takes control of the movement of the cart and tries to find equilibrium against gravity. The artist explores the expressiveness of the system, using human size heavy pendulums, capable of generating enough inertia to generate self-rotation. He also tries to humanize the system in a game of failures and successes.
Clones are represented as identical mechanical machines (inverted pendulums), that using human behaviors, fuzzy logic, drift to find endlessness equilibrium.
“These machines and contraptions striving to achieve or illustrate the intricate webs of order and chaos within boundless states, in all their scale or complexity, are powerful objects. They strip away our anthropocentric view of nature, a reminder that it can be neither understood or controlled, making impossible the rationalist perspective. While reminding us of these harsh facts these tireless and pragmatic devices simultaneously communicate to us that they might be better suited to the task of grasping infinity than we are.”
Download “Different ways to infinity” by curator Mónica Bello about D.W.I.
Credits
Different Ways to Infinity: Clones by Félix Luque Sánchez
Vincent Evrard: Arduino programming.
Julien Maire: Mechanical design.
Technic: Inverted Pendulums in Epoxy Foaming, Mechanical parts, encoders, controllers, motors.
A production of "secteur arts numériques, Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles"
With the support of iMAL (FabLAB)