Title: Pixi
Artist(s): WERC Collective
Source: ?
Sense(s): visual, visceral
Issue(s): visibilising ecological processes
This project is an installation of ‘pixies’ in a forest in Drenthe, the Netherlands. Each ‘pixi’ is a digital device, bound by a set of rules, and connected to other ‘pixies’ following the same rules. The devices can communicate to each other and respond to both environmental data and the presence of an audience. In this way, the Pixi is ‘a digital organism, inspired by the complex patterns that exist in nature, such as flocks of birds and schools of fish’.1 It therefore visibilises such complex patterns, while asking key questions about the collective intelligence of, for example, murmurations of starlings and other natural collective phenomena. Furthermore, it asks ‘whether a technical natural phenomenon can imitate the complex aesthetics of nature or interact with it’. 2
This piece is significant in that it visibilises ecological processes such as the communication of organisms, that can be not apparent to publics. When an audience visits the site, the Pixies illuminate based on the proximity of an audience. Thus, the audience member only sees certain Pixies and their interactions. In this way, Pixi is a metaphor for the myriad ecological processes taking place in our midst that are usually hidden. Furthermore, it visibilises the networked dimension to ecosystems, which is also important.