It is not often that you are able to say that an artwork is viewing you just as you are viewing it. Zwischenräume, which translates to ‘the space in between’, is a collaborative installation by Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders. It is not the clean-cut, ultramodern work that you would expect of most artworks being displayed at the 2012 New Media Art Awards exhibition. The work’s messy, damaged and downright violent appearance provides an eerie glimpse of a potential future within the gallery space. Encountering the shattered plasterboard which litters the space surrounding the installation, caused by a group of autonomous robots featured in the work, is certainly startling, especially when viewed alongside the distinctive neon lights and fragile machinery of other artworks in the exhibition. Saunders and Gemeinboeck’s primitive-looking robots have been installed behind a wall of the gallery with the ability to observe and destroy their environment as well as communicate with one another. Each machine has been equipped with a hammer to punch holes in the wall so that they are able to see into the outside world, using cameras as eyes, to alleviate their own boredom. Similar to many human endeavours, the machines’ work, while violent and destructive in nature, is rewarded by knowledge. This confronting and intimidating installation highlights the ways in which the technological revolution is changing the social fabric of our world and questions what the future holds for the human-artificial intelligence relationship. It is an undeniable fact that the evolution of technology and artificial intelligence over the past sixty years has irreversibly changed our way of life. In Zwischenräume, Gemeinboeck and Saunders explore the ways in which we are able to adjust... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders, Zwischenräume (installation view, detail), 2010-12. Robotics, electronics, custom artificial intelligence software, aluminium, steel, wood, plasterboard, installed dimensions variable. Courtesy the artists.
