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Le_Pôle
Espace Landowski, Boulogne-Billancourt
28, avenue André-Morizet,
92100 Boulogne-Billancourt, France
Phone : +33 (0)1 55 18 43 56
Metro : line 9 (Marcel-Sembat) ; Bus : lines 126 and 175

Press Contacts
Aline Ridet +33 (0)1 55 18 45 47
aline.ridet@mairie-boulogne-billancourt.fr
Alexia Dana +33 (0)1 55 18 40 60
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Exhaustive Press Packet . [ 730 ko ] ( in french )
[ !sneak preview! above >
a QuickTime extract of the Labo Corps_Mental continuum ]

Page En Français
WebSite www.corps-mental.com

Le Labo Corps_Mental
A physiologically interactive laboratory-installation

Stéphane Sikora ( artificial intelligence development )
Michel Redolfi ( sound universes )
Nathalie Wolberg ( space designer )

A co-production of Qualium_Data / Le_Pôle
–in partnership with Thought Technology and The BFE
September 29-November 30, tuesday to sunday, 12 noon to 6:00 p.m.
Espace Landowski – Entrance Salle des Conférences
No admission charge; possibility of visit by appointment: akmi@corps-mental.com

«
This exhibition intercepts the artist's work in progress, at the moment it begins to take form in the necessary presence of the visitor. The "Labo Corps_Mental" is the first stage in a process that can only be realized with the participation of the human being "who surrenders", "who is open to being known". The Labo seeks to collect, store, and analyse the living physiology of the emotional experience. Each visitor is thus invited to partake of a moment of repose, withdrawn from the external world, and redirected toward the internal continuum – a sensory, perceptive, imaginative flux activating a phenomenology as physical as it is subjective, each aspect interacting with the other in the most mysterious way.
The visitor is equipped with physiological sensors which detect heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, external body temperature, and electrodermal response (palm sweating). A real-time computer technique called 'multi-agent simulation' then creates a dynamic trace of the data. The result is a visual continuum, or 'emotional scan', permitting the visitor to establish a perceptible flow of his physiological variability – that is, the background physiology as it is subjected to spontaneous emotional reaction. This visual continuum is video-projected on the ceiling of the semi-enclosed bed, specially designed for the exhibition, on which the visitor reclines.
As guide/stimulator of the emotional experience, the visitor listens via his/her "inner ear": we have in fact asked the composer Michel Redolfi to create a "soundscape" immerging the visitor in a multitude of sonic worlds. The visual continuum will thus reveal the secret of an aurally receptive organism, a body tuned in to its environment both physiologically and psychologically.
The data left by the visitor will be carefully preserved for analysis and will be correlated with any verbal statement he or she makes, if so desired, describing the experience just undergone – the path taken and what was felt.
The ultimate stage of this project aims (via an environment in which the visitor will be totally enveloped in a "membrane") to determine what a nucleus of artifical intelligence (i.e., the computer system) might gain in perceptive and active ( enactive ) autonomy, "learning", from the stream of visitors, to perceive the patterns of their emotional physiology in order progressively to establish a relationship with that physiology.
Several partners from the cognitive sciences are collaborating with the team formed by aniKa mignotte –artist, and Stephane Sikora –developer in artificial intelligence for the project.
»

aniKa m.

Corps_Mental Project (in french)
demo[1999] / h2ptm'03 / [oct2002] / [april2003]