While former versions of the series were designing a single mode of interaction for a single physical space, we have now shifted to web based-interactions…
Proteus is a collaborative project continuously evolving as a series of mixed-media interactive installations integrating human and machine intelligence to interact with organic material behaviour, digital modulation, and human perception. A common material vector to the series gathers the unique characteristics of ferrofluid — a colloidal material that dynamically alters its shape under magnetic influence — to evoke an elemental, elusive presence akin to the ancient god Proteus, a foretelling deity reappraised and characterised anew throughout digitised communication. As Proteus shifts between forms to evade truth, it becomes a contemplative meditation on change, unpredictability, and the vast unknown. This behaviour speaks to the universal myth of the desire to understand and categorize phenomena that resist stable form.
While former versions of the series were designing a single mode of interaction for a single physical space, we have now shifted to web based-interactions enacted by personal devices. The communication between the artwork and its beholders thus spans across the diversity of personal time dynamics and detaches itself from the walls of the museum. Embedded sensors in each of these personal devices also allow for a finer grain of face and gaze information, and a more sophisticated interaction powered by AI. Conceived as an immersive and non-site-specific installation, it combines both the plethora of interactions happening on the web and its direct experience “on-site” with a dedicated interactive device. To extend the aesthetic vocabulary crafted across the series, this new version expresses the aspects of distribution through the design of spatially scattered displays embedded in a spaceframe. Individual display cells are complemented with reflexive and transparent panels across the space to render a unified spatial experience that occurs anywhere and anytime Across The Networked Planet.
Analogue distortions and reflections of the digital image have always been a recurrent gesture for Proteus. Here they follow the random distribution of the digital screens to scatter across the three dimensional grid.
Physical installation with tablet interaction as exhibited during Millenials at LABoral Centro de Arte, Gijon, Spain, 2024.
Series: Proteus
Version: 4.0
Title: Across The Networked Planet
Year: 2024
Type: Interactive and Generative Installation
Authors: CompMonks, Maria Smigielska
Dimensions / Format: var.
Materials: Digital screens, Raspberry Pis, steel bars, ABS joints, two-way mirrors.
Funding: Creative Europe, Pro Helvetia
Production: This work was realised within the framework of a European Media Art Platform residency program at KONTEJNER | bureau of Contemporary Art Praxis with support from the Creative Europe Culture Programme of the European Union in 2023
Exhibitions: Living Systems (Museum of Contemporary Art, 2023),Millenials (Laboral, 2024)
©CompMonks, Maria Smigielska, Photo: Marcos MorillaLABoral Centro de Arte