Interactive installation
2025
The word “autonomy” comes from Greek and means “to give oneself one’s own law.” The phrase “autonomous machine” is therefore paradoxical, since a machine is a deterministic system controlled by external inputs. Can a machine, or a symbolic system, acquire a form of autonomy by coding itself, as biological systems do? When such systems are used to manage human society, do they amount to constraint or to a form of freedom?
In nature, living beings perpetuate life through reproduction, yet this continuity is bounded by physical laws, notably the second law of thermodynamics. Nonetheless, the idea of immortality persists across many cultures. In Chinese mythology and folklore, the lifespan of species is governed by a natural order imposed by a supernatural entity called “Heaven” or the “Heavenly Court” (天庭, Tian Ting). Any attempt to attain immortality is thus punished or thwarted. Only beings like the Firebird can escape such punishment and travel freely through time and space.
Our story extends the one told in the first year. This time, the Firebird arrives on a desert planet, where it meets an old computer, and a conversation unfolds between them.