Robotic installation
2022 -2026
Modified industrial robot, custom hardware and software, drawing algorithm, resin pills. The Sleepers: Sculptures of human heads made from bio-based corn and copper, based on 3D scans. Scanning electron microscope photographs of psychotropic pills on steel sheet: Trankimazin 2 mg, Brintellix 10 mg, Lorazepan 1 mg, Maserati XTC
This industrial pharmaceutical robot – a creature half organic and half digital – is assigned to perform an endless task. Driven by an algorithm, it moves hundreds of coloured pills to trace a real-time simulation of the synaptic activity of our neurons.
A series of sculptures of sleeping people, titled The Sleepers, surround the robot, while psychotropic pills photographed under an electron microscope hang on the walls.
Tranquilisers, antidepressants, anxiolytics, psychostimulants— these substances have become key parts of an alienating techno-capitalist society that treats its workers like machines.
Industrial robots are conceived to perform repetitive tasks with almost absolute precision. They perform them without fatigue, without rest, without loss of concentration and without hesitation. This is the mastery of automation, a synchronised symphony.
In the installation series "perpétuité", we want to stage industrial machines in endless tasks guided by algorithms, in a kind of perpetual performance.
The vision we are trying to represent is that of our realization through the technoneoliberal dream, the total replacement of humans by automation.
We face our extinction as our technological creations, our machines, overtake us as masters of repetition, collaborative work, data and computation. But they also replace Sisyphus, condemned like him to repeat and undo a task in perpetuity.
Credits
Perpétuité II by Félix Luque in Collaboration with Vincent Evrard and Damien Gernay
Perpétuité II is a coproduction of “secteur arts numériques, Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles”, "Chroniques 2022 (Biennal of Digital Imagination)” and iMAL.