Uncanny Valleys of a Possible Future

Peter Flemming

[CA]

"Spiderlogic"

Site-variable kinetic and sound installation, 2016

"Spiderlogic" is a series developed broadly as schematic guidelines for improvised installations, rather than pre-determined finished artwork. This iteration is a room-scale kinetic sound installation with visual, structural and/or sonic activation of all surfaces (wall, ceiling, floor) where suspended objects interact with mechanically modulated light to generate a soundtrack of arhythmic/rhythmic tension.

Floating ladders, chairs, tables as both structural sound transducers and found-object marionettes. Lighting is influenced by parasitic mechanical extensions to the gallery dimmers. These motorized controllers can be retro-fitted to most standard artist-centre lighting systems. The ordinary electricity of swaying light bulbs is photo-voltaically transformed into a pulsing floor of sound. Ceiling-mounted mechanical manipulators in each corners of the space aperiodically perturb the network of undulating object actors. Moving shadows fall on a series of wall-mounted light-sensitive oscillators which electromagnetically activate a very long thin wire, amplified to emanate a shimmering, eerie polyphony.

Peter Flemming is a full-time artist, part-time professor and some-time curator in Montréal who exhibits and works internationally. Research interests include ad hoc architecture, intuitive physics, informal engineering, neuromimes, solar power, waste harvest, saunas. Flemming's work considers natural and technological ecologies, in site-specific projects that are resolved intuitively and experimentally.

Artist statement: “My principal aim is to build systems I do not fully understand, with the intention of attempting to understand them. Technological systems for interpreting and shaping desire texture daily life; a means to rationally orchestrate the world. Might not there be a need for systems which irrationally de-orchestrate?”

Facts