these flying spheres monitor human activity and emotional data to flock nearby preferred people

artist group, random international, has created a fleet of autonomous flying spheres, which flock together like a slow-motion group of birds, whilst monitoring nearby humans. the project, dubbed zoological, comprises a series of drone-like helium-filled foil spheres piloted by an onboard system which employs lidar technology.

images courtesy of random international

the spheres employ this pulsed layer technology to make sense of what is happening around them. this data then determines how they form collectively. depending on this data and a series of programmed ’emotions’, the sphere could distance themselves from humans or single out an individual, hovering close by them.

the work forms part of +/- human, an immersive experience curated by multi award-winning choreographer and director wayne mcgregor for bloomberg summer at the roundhouse. +/- human brings wayne mcgregor together with artists from iconic electronic music label warp records and random international to explore the relationship between mechanical autonomy and human beings.

‘the work is an amplified and physical manifestation of our lived experience in a world increasingly run by algorithms‘, the group explains. ‘as a species, we are having to adapt rapidly to a continually developing cohabitation with autonomous machines, whose presence is often intangible or discrete. zoological was informed by a desire to explore some of the implications of this through physicality, instinct, and emotion.‘