Living creatures such as human beings, animals and plants have the ability to communicate with each other, through languages, non-verbal, symbols, chemical substances, media, etc. This is a kind of information exchange, one party send information to another party and the other one send feedback after receiving the original information. Have we ever thought about whether this kind of transmission also exists between living creatures and non-living creatures? For years, scientists and social scientists find that the process of communication is not only limited to living things, but also can be carried between machines or parts of machines. As Norbert Wiener said, “Whether a transmission is between people, or between people and machines, the process is similar in that information is sent by one party and received by another, which can send a response. This is a type of feedback. People, animals and plants all have the ability to take certain actions in response to their environment; in the same way, machines have feedback systems in order for their performances to be altered or evaluated in accordance with results.” Through there, the methods of communication come to a new realm. Technologies are involved besides traditional ways. Here comes the original definition of cybernetics in the 1940s, which is a scientific way of communication between animals and machines. Later in 1968, second-order cybernetics, also known as cybernetics of cybernetics or new cybernetics, was released by Heinz von Foerster and others. The new theory indicates the recursive application of cybernetics to itself, which in other words, the cybernetics also practices and responses in accordance with their own ideas through the process. Basing on these theories, artists keep exploring new possibilities and creating artworks different from the apply of cybernetics in production and manufactory for decades.

 

If machines can respond according to different requirements, then what will be the factors to motivate or control their responses? In what kind of visible ways will they respond? What kind of information are they going to express? Is it possible to let machines think by themselves through the process of cybernetics and give more responses further? 

 

For my project the Iktsuarpok, what I did was trying to explore the communication among living creatures and non-living creatures. The whole structure looks like three non-luminous planets belong to one galaxy in the universe. Each of the three fixed ball-shape machines owns their individual system. On the top of each planet, there is a beam of light keeps rotating, just like sending out a signal and waiting for the reply. To explore these unknown planets in the universe, audience have to walk close to the largest planet among these three, which supposes to be the fixed star of the galaxy. Once audience comes close to it and touch the surface of it to explore the unknown space, the planet will feel audience’s heat and further show its beauty by lighting up all lights in different patterns. With lights’ projecting onto the special slices, audience is able to see the colourful light collocation. When the surrounding planets detect the “vitality” from the centre planet, all lights on their planets will be on. You light up a colourful planet system, a colourful universe. 

 

The Iktsuarpok is an artwork which combines arts and science and basically, realises the communication among audience and machines through programming. At the beginning, only one beam of light at the top of each machine keeps lighted and rotating while whole machine is non-luminous. Machines communicate with audience through the heat and the distance between each other. Once audience comes close to the largest planet and touch the surface of it, heat sensor will detects the appearance of the audience and light up all lights inside the acrylic planet ball. When audience leaves the machine, all lights will be off after finish their twinkle pattern. Machines communicate with each others through light. Once the small planet machine detects the bright light from the large one or another small one, it will light up itself to show the colourful side. If the large planet becomes non-luminous or the whole environment is dark, small planets will also turn back into a non-luminous one. 

 

Since all lights are white, how can audience see the different colours when planet balls light up themselves? I sticked dichroic filter to the acrylic slices to filter from a white light source to produce light that is perceived by humans to be highly saturated (intense) in colour. One beam of white light projects to one dichroic slice and with different angle, shape and location of each dichroic slice, all white and coloured light will project and reflect further to create the effect of the combination of lush colours.

 

The name the Iktsuarpok is borrowed from Inuktitut ᐃᒃᑦᓱᐊᕐᐳᒃ, which represents the feeling of anticipation while waiting for someone to arrive, often leading to intermittently going outside to check for them. I regard sending and receiving signals among machines as the internal communication of one galaxy system while audience’s interaction with machines as human being’s exploration to unknown planets. One beam of light on the top of each machine like that the planet keeps sending out signals and being looking forward to receiving reply from other planets or creatures. There are several ways of communication and also, there are different meanings and purposes of communication. I use the iktsuarpok to express the willings of planets to wait for human being’s arriving and exploring through the communication between living-things (audience) and non living-things (machine).

 

Cybernetic artists have been working on cybernetic installations for decades, which give me the inspiration for my own project. The first “spatiodynamic sculpture” CYSP 1 (Figure 1) was created by Nicolas Schoffer in 1956, who was regarded as the father of cybernetic art. This installation made with steel and duraluminum was controlled by photo-electric cells which detected colour, light intensity and sound intensity, and furthermore had different unpredictable reactions such as eccentric rotation according to what had been detected. Maurice Béjart also combined dance, concrete music and spatiodynamic sculpture together (Figure 2), allying abstract sculpture and choreography to show a new field of arts. In the following thirty years, Nicolas created more sculptures based on cybernetics. For instance, the Cybernetic Tower of Liege in 1961 (Figure 3) and Chronos 8 (Figure 4) in 1982. All sculpture were controlled by different factors from the environment, such as light, sound and pulse of traffic, and gave several feedbacks such as the rotation of the mirror. Gordon Pask, who released the theory of new cybernetics, created the Colloquy of Mobiles in 1968 (Figure 5). Different from the previous works which controlled by external factors, elements of the Colloquy of Mobiles communicated with each other, independent of the external influences. However, the audience could still take part in the conversation between the machines with flashlights and mirrors. This piece of work exactly realized the interaction and communication between people and machines and machines themselves at the same time, no doubt was magnificent and remarkable. The concurrence of internal communication and external interaction is what I would like to explore, how the machine reacts according to elements’ behaviors from itself, and what it wants to express to the audience based on audience’s behavior.

 

In addition to the forms of the mentioned artworks, Lightpaintings (Figure 6) series by Stephen Knapp also brings me quite a lot afflatus. His creation on light and different shapes and sizes of dichroic glass created destinations, a sense of place. The various kinds of lush colour compositions underlay a serious exploration of space and dimension, light and colour and perception that changed how audience looked at objects.