Olivain Porry, 2019

“Being Collective” is an artistic experiment conducted during the workshop “Behavioral Matter 2” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, in March 2019 with the collaboration of Petra Gemeinboeck, Jean Dubois, Aexandre Curlet, Erin Gee and Guillaume Pascale. The aim of this experiment-performance was to experiment with contact points between sets of machines, pigeons and humans in the continuity of the explorations undertaken with “L’Internet des perruches” during the first “Behavioral Matter” workshop at the ENSCI. “Being Collective” translates our trials in the form of a video in which we can observe robots trying to coax pigeons with breadcrumbs. The robots try to insert themselves into the group of pigeons which, distrustful, approach, move back, fly away and come back close to the robots.