Humans place their hopes and beliefs onto technological systems whilst developing a relationship of subordination and trust. This project aims to critic society’s perverse dependency on technology by having a machine sustain human blood in a repetitive motion as long as people desire.

The kinetic installation, developed with Arduino, functions as a pendulum losing a cycle with each movement. As it moves the lighting intensity and the motor sound react accordingly, as if the machine was attempting to communicate. These humanoid features aim to build empathy with the people interacting, being perceived as a tortured machine. Hence the audience is given a hand crank to increment the machine’s cycles so it may keep running infinitely.

‘Impetus of the Machine’ is a decontextualisation of current technological systems presenting itself as a one purpose machine that can only survive by human intervention. I argue that by placing people at such a position of power incites them to reflect on the status of the relationship between humans and machines. 

This project was exhibited at Ars Electronica Festival 2018 in Linz, Austria.