AKADEMIE DER KÜNSTE (Berlin-DE). Création mondiale de l'installation le 5 novembre 2025.

YouTube - Trailer of the installation (4-channel electroacoustic music, abstract animated video and six suspended sonic, robotic and interactive pendular objects). 
YouTube - Trailer of the animated video (4-channel electroacoustic music and abstract animated video).
Portfolio of the installation (PDF)

Ton-Pendel(a)utom@t is an audiovisual and robotic installation for 4-channel electroacoustic music, abstract animated video and a device of six suspended, sonic, robotic and interactive pendular objects. It is part of the series (a)utom@ton.
 
The title of the series refers to the word "automaton" which names a being-machine that acts on its own account and moves spontaneously. 
The German words "Ton" and "Pendel" mean "sound" and "pendulum". I combined both words and the German word "Automat" in "Ton-Pendelautomat" to suggest a pendular sound automaton.
 
As for the other works of the series, both signs (a) and @ inserted in the spelling of the title emphasize the distinction between what drives a human being and a robot. 
(a) alludes to the little a object conceptualised by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the elusive and unidentifiable object of desire which can take very various shapes for each individual. 
@ evokes the WiFi-connected robotic objects.
 
The installation questions the relationship between humans and machines and proposes a hybrid sound and visual imaginary at the intersection of a mechanical system that seems alive, deforming under the pressure of forces, and a ramified organism whose connective and proliferating potentiality is constrained by a rigid and limited framework. 
The oscillatory movements of the suspended objects of the robotic device remind us that everything is movement and precariousness.

6 3D printed pendular objects,  painted with a mirror-finish silver chrome colour,  hung up from the ceiling by an electric cable;  silver elastic threads stretched between the suspended objects; 15-Minute animated video (1980x1020 px), with 4-channel electroacoustic music, projected in loop  onto a large screen or a white wall.

Clara Maïda, November 2025