Invasion of robot balloons floats an uplifting view of the singularity
Is that a barrage balloon hovering above my head? Wait, there are lots of them, with appendages like tentacles: floating machines called “aerobes”, resembling translucent deep-sea organisms, by the 50-year-old Korean-american conceptual artist Anicka Yi. At least, that’s what it says in the press release. I had to double-check that this year’s artist tackling the annual commission inside Tate Modern’s daunting Turbine Hall wasn’t the reincarnation of HG Wells. With so many alien entities drifting through the ether, it feels as though The War of the Worlds is about to kick off.
Titled In Love with the World, the installation features 18 aerobes, each essentially an enormous helium-filled balloon kitted out with a set of rotors. Yi divides them into two “species”, both programmed to congregate where they sense heat: the octopuslike “xenojellies”, which rhythmically twitch spotty tentacles as though propelling themselves 20,000 leagues beneath the sea; and a bunch of bulbous, biomorphic “planulae”, apparently inspired by mushrooms, which, with their friendly yellow glow, look more like paper lanterns, or, surreally, lumps of freshly chopped root ginger. It is as if Yi has transformed the Turbine Hall into a colossal fish tank in which people are as significant as plankton.
Silent but for the faint whirr of their motors, the aerobes glide slowly, almost stickily, beautifully catching the sunshine that cascades through the long skylight above. Periodically, as they run out of juice, they return to the “battery pond” – a backstage airbase at the hall’s far end. Nearby, Yi has also installed a diffuser wafting out scents supposedly linked to the history of the site. When I visited, though, while wearing a face covering, the only whiff I got was of my morning cup of coffee.
OK, so Yi’s aerobes have a slight novelty-act quality, like fancy balloons at a ritzy party – and, in such a big space, they also feel a little sparse. That said, each individual contraption has a mesmerising, magical quality.
Are Yi’s robots plotting to take over? Certainly, there’s a lot of anxiety these days about the “singularity” – when technology becomes uncontrollable, threatening human civilisation.
Yet, they aren’t dystopian, branded with some evil corporate logo; if anything, Yi’s aerobes are indifferent to the sublunary concerns of onlookers. Surely, her vision of tomorrow is benign. This is, then, a delightfully imaginative installation, suffused with a wondrous sense of poetry.