No-control tower
Antoine Schmitt, 2011.
Label
The no-control tower is a control tower that does not control anything. We indeed see the direction and speed arrows of the people, but we can only be observers of these free humans who manage their intentions and their movements by themselves within the world and through the crowd.
Synopsis
The no-control tower is a control tower that does not control anything. The screen displays the live video from the street and on top of it shows graphical elements that identify the human beings and for each of them computes their speed and direction, like in a control tower. But here, we are unable to direct them. We are reduced to the observation of these free humans who manage their movements and their intentions on their own within the world and through the crowd trying to avoid as much as possible the collisions and accidents. Their movements are managed by internal and external forces and by complex social and behavioral protocols that we can analyze thanks to the mathematical graphics that are displayed : direction and strength of the intention, grouped movements, constraint of physical barriers, social protocols of politeness, strategies of avoidance of danger, random brownian forces, global crowd behaviors, etc… We are placed at the position of scientists studying a population of free and social animals. And soon we will go back down there, under the microscope. The no-control tower confronts us directly to the mechanisms of freedom, the one of the other humans, and ours too. This artwork is the prolongation of my personal artistic research which adresses the autonomous movement, its causes and its shapes. Here, I want to place the spectator in the situation of the analysis of the mechanisms of freedom, and in the end question his own internal mechanisms of choice and movement.
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