A Sound Vehicle Swarm is an immersive installation composed of multiple cybernetic automata that activate the space through sound and movement. Each robot embodies cognition through its ability to move, sense, and emit acoustic waves. Together with the room in which they evolve, they form an ecosystem of resonances, reflections, and information. The installation references the long lineage of automata dating back to the late medieval period, when artisans, artists, and scientists built machines to imitate birds, humans, and planets.
These early mechanical organisms were created with the goal not only of reproducing the world, but also of gaining an intimate knowledge of the action inherent in all things. A reductionist dream eroded by the more recent discovery of chaos and complexity, and their impact on climate change, collective dynamics, and more. "A Sound Vehicle Swarm" depicts this collision of paradigms in a context where manufactured machines become autonomous and unpredictable when endowed with animal-like communication and perception capabilities. Members of the public participate in the synthetic psychology of a robotic ecosystem, disrupting a precarious balance by moving around the sources, modulating the propagation of acoustic waves, and pushing the swarm to self-organize new soundscapes. By moving through "A Sound Vehicle Swarm," one experiences an artificial nature that recalls patterns encountered in the real world, but which is dislocated and placed in a new and unsettling context.
**Baudouin Saintyves (Chicago, US)
**With sound artist Sam Scranton (Chicago, US)
Structure built with the assistance of Roiel Benitez
Wednesday, April 13 | 2 PM - 5 PM | CCN
Thursday, April 14 and Friday, April 15 | 2 PM - 5:45 PM | CCN
Saturday, April 16 and Sunday, April 17 | 2 PM - 6 PM | Porte Maubec
Baudoin Saintyves is a physicist, engineer, and multimedia artist. Currently an artist-in-residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he studies how physics explains self-organization patterns in nature through fluid mechanics, statistical physics, and materials science, and is developing new robotic principles based on these insights. Through his performances, he explores an artistic process that highlights a connection between the emergence of natural and creative forms in immersive audiovisual narratives, featuring real-time projections of physical experiments.
I am a composer, performer, and artist based in Chicago. I improvise and record music using percussion and electronics. I create moving, evening-length conceptual ceremonies. I build installations with friends that take the form of guided tours, psychedelic waiting rooms, and swarming sound creatures. I have presented my work nationally and internationally at festivals, conferences, and performance series such as the Darmstadt Ferienkurse, Indexical, Composit, NUNC! 3, New Music Gathering, Frequency Festival, the International Conference on Music and Minimalism, Outer Ear Festival, and Omaha Under the Radar. My music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Borealis Festival Radio Space, and WFMT, and released by Parlour Tapes+. I perform in several groups: Honestly Same (with Zach Good, Mabel Kwan, Lia Kohl, and Zach Moore), Beautifulish (with Katherine Young), and Physique (with Neil Quigley), with recordings released on Amalgam and Shinkoyo Artists Pool.
What others are saying:
"an artist taking sincere risks" - New Music Box
"[one of] Chicago's most interesting sound explorers" - Bandcamp Daily
"field recordings from an imaginary world" - Chicago Reader