delete yourself

By anders pearson 26 Feb 2001

since i know i’ll probably find the time and money to actually build this, i figure the best i can do is to describe in detail my plan for my installation art concept. it’s not a completed or polished idea, but it’s a start. my sister gets a lot of credit for helping me flesh it out (she’s the one in the family who actually has an art degree).

the idea basically consists of a series of rooms. there are three so far but will probably be more.

first room: the hugging machine.

a while back, i was feeling lonely and depressed about being in new york without knowing very many people and decided that i really needed a hug. i became obsessed with the idea of building a hugging machine. the idea is to build a machine vaguely human in shape, probably constructed largely out of mannequin parts that, when hugged, hugs back. through proper use of padding, heating and force-feedback mechanisms, it should come as close as is mechanically possible to the feel of a real hug from a human.

second room: target.

this room provides the visitor with the unique experience of being both predator and prey at the same time. the room contains several large caliber guns mounted on motorized tripods around the room. it is absolutely vital that these are real guns. each gun is equipped with motion detectors and will follow movement through the room (think: automated guns from Aliens). so as the visitor walks through the room, they have multiple guns continously aimed directly at them. on top of the guns are mounted digital video cameras aimed down the sights which go through closed-circuits to large projection screens around the room. so the visitor clearly sees themselves through the sights of the machinery.

third room: multicellular organism.

design a small, mobile, autonomous bot (probably 6 inches or so in size) that, using its sensors simply moves to get as far away from any other object as possible. fill a large room with a few hundred of these. by themselves, they will spread out until they’re all evenly spaced and can’t get any further away from each other and eventually reach a stable equilibrium point with no motion. when a visitor enters the room and moves through it, they detect the person and the ones nearest scurry away, sending ripples through the rest of the room.

that’s what i’ve got so far. still bouncing more stuff around in my head. someday, when i have lots of time, money and cheap microprocessors…