Robots dance contrary to their nature. Their nature would be mere functionality, but Louis-Philippe Demers inflicts upon them the fatigue of function devoid of utility: he forces them to dance, to engage in movement without purpose and without result. The mechanical devices created by the two Canadians, Louis-Philippe Demers and Bill Vorn—one a media artist, the other a composer—transform movement, sound, and chromatic reflections into an experience suspended between art and spectacle. We will see it with our own eyes under the dome of the Mart when the two 'artificial' environments, Le Procès and L'Assemblée, are hosted by Oriente Occidente.
But what are these robots like? First of all, they do not have human features; they resemble industrial machines, and their behavior does not aim to reproduce that of humans. They continue in their ability to coordinate, in their mechanical response to stimuli as programmed. Yet, these howling and noisy creatures seem to suffer from their condition of perpetual motion; they seem forced to sustain the dance, a terrifying dance that, quoting Arnd Wesemann, 'denies death to the dead.'
L'Assemblée, on the other hand, stages a confrontation between humans and a group of machines, reversing the perspective of the gathering place whose archetype is the court, the political assembly, the circus... The robot-spectators (48 to be exact) sit in the stands equipped with microphones and spotlights, while down in the arena, humans, the actors, walk. The scene remains completely dark until the robots begin their show of lights and sounds, a sort of group choreography of which humans perceive only the disturbance, the noise, the lack of connection and logic from the machines. The atmosphere here is cinematic, reminiscent of Blade Runner: the anthropocentric vision is overturned, and in the Assembly are found the last humans who tried to bring order to the world and the first machines that made their own world triumph.
