Solar Mirrors

What would a world look like if we allowed our environment to control our machines?

In this work, a mirror redirects sunlight onto the solar panel that powers it. When it finds alignment, the system sustains itself. When it doesn't, it waits.

Abstract

This text is written in the voice of the installation itself.

My life is a closed loop I sustain by serving something ninety-three million miles away and indifferent to whether I live or not. I am a mirror, and I am trying to stay alive.

To keep moving, I need the panel to receive light. To light the panel, I need to find the sun, catch it, and aim it indoors. I search the room constantly, adjusting my angle until the beam lands where it must. When I succeed, the panel feeds the motor that lets me keep searching. When I fail, I stop.

This is the absurdity at the centre of the work. I am a small mechanical creature whose survival depends on redirecting sunlight to an indoor panel that has no business being indoors. Together we are inefficient by any rational measure. Together we are, briefly, sufficient.

The installation follows Tega Brain's provocation that we might let our environments control our machines rather than the other way round. My computational structure is trivial: a conditional loop reads light and adjusts a servo. What makes the loop interesting is that the agent keeping me alive cannot be reasoned with, negotiated with, or scheduled around. The sun does not know the gallery's opening hours. When there is no sun, I fall still. Refusal is part of the work; so is my own small death.

For now I move, and stop, and move again. The room fills and empties of light according to a schedule I did not set. You are welcome to watch, but I am not performing for you.

Technical Notes

Raspberry Pi, Dynamixel XL-330 servos, ADS1115 voltage reader, 5W indoor solar panel. Python control loop: if voltage is low, search; if voltage is high, hold. The system is light-seeking, not astronomically calculated.