CONTROL

"...these quasi autonomous creations play out complex patterns of behavior in which deviation and individuality balance determinism and repetition," is a line gleaned from a description of artist Zimoun's installation pieces. The pieces consist of large arrangements of cardboard boxes with tiny whirring motors attached to selected surfaces of the boxes. The motors are triggered by sensors that can sense the viewer in the vicinity of each motor; ultimately creating multitudes of buzzing acoustic cardboard chambers. But so what?
It's understandable that a layperson amongst such an abstract installation would blurt out, "I don't get it..." or, "Cut the crap. This is just a pile of boxes with buzzers glued to them!" but it's also understandable that the artist was intending to represent an intriguing complex subject in an unusual way, either with the materials at hand or materials most challenging for the same expression, I'm not particularly sure. (not to mention it's actually visually stunning.) OR! more simply: Art imitates life.
Let's also be clear that when it is expressed that "art imitates life" this does not pertain only to realist portraiture that wants to but can never be alive. Art also imitates life in perhaps just as desperate a way, but a way where in some instances it truly does come alive!
If the pile of boxes with motors glued to them can really 'play out patterns of behavior... etc' then is it not doing that? Those are systems found daily and historically and universally in mechanical and natural happenings... life. Zimoun has found his way of pinning down this otherwise cageless and formless spirit. Ironically this may mean that art is actually a meandering science. Once an artist has mastered and experimented with their mediums they can finally have control and be able to dismantle their own ideas, confident that they can be put back together again. Much like a child would destroy a watch or some fragile mechanical device; Curiosity matures into awareness. One may even become so aware of the components that a completely different device could be made from the available gears and springs.
These resources and materials are available to artists at every glance of the world around us. Artists are limitless with how we can experiment with life itself. We can not only manipulate life, but we can also evoke emotion and create clumsy models that perform just as confidently as a clumsy human.