Mariela Yeregui, Miguel Grassi: Octópodos Sisíficos

Artist(s):

Title:

Octópodos Sisíficos

Exhibition:

SIGGRAPH 2017: Unsettled Artifacts: Technological Speculations from Latin America

Creation Year:

2010

Artist Statement:

Developed by the Artes Electrónicas group at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero in Argentina, directed by Mariela Yeregui, Octópodos Sisíficos (Sisyphean Octopods) (2010) is an installation comprised of six mobile robots that carry LCD screens displaying endoscopic videos with images that resemble internal body organs.

The robots move erratically, without any purpose but to reveal their own technological animality; they display a corporeal behavior that is both artificial and organic, material and phenomenological, exposing their own absurd existence as “living” artificial objects. Forced to repeatedly carry their own physical and virtual bodies, the robots’ task might be considered a useless effort; or, on the contrary, in transporting themselves, perhaps their labor grants the machines an ontological dimension by humanizing them. Like Sisyphus, condemned to perform a laborious and futile task ad eternum, these mytho-technological beings were created to carry an image of themselves and, with that, to define their own fate and identity.