In Ways Of Sitting WIP, foci + loci, a duo living and working in New York, developed interactive, virtual objects, modeled after Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. In art historical contexts, the readymade’s import as aesthetic object, sitting in a gallery, denies any affordance usually associated with the object as such. Re-contextualizing such objects in a responsive numerical space allows for a new set of affordances to emerge. As a default state, these objects will »flock« until the user figures out their own way of interacting with them. This is the first iteration of flocking behavior of the bottle rack object.
Using audiovisual reactive objects, this work-in-progress also incorporates particle synthesis, involving light, audio, microsound and water. These objects interact with each other and their environment, while a »force chip« propels them into virtual space, adding chaos to predetermined order. The increasing complexity of these interactions reveals peculiarities in the underlying code, and prevents us from predicting every response of this system. This is machine agency manifesting in patterns outside of the objects’ programming (i.e. covalent bonding and looping behavior). In the continuation of this ongoing project, we will further extend this agency (i.e. covalent bonding) to the readymades themselves, such as the bottle racks seen previously. In thinking of affordances as critical content beyond functionality, we aim to emphasize the validity of all player responses to objects demonstrating emergent behavior.
