Going Fragile is a temporary weather station consisting of four room-sized computers. Each computer interacts with the room around it by inflating thousands of delicate soap bubbles over the course of a day. The short lives of each bubble are closely monitored by an array of sensors, measuring each bubble’s lifespan, and the violence of their jiggle. As the array forms bubbles, as each sensor monitors the lives of these bubbles, and as each bubble jiggles and eventually pops, the array builds an increasingly intelligent information network between the jiggling bubbles and their interactions with indoor air.
It’s a small bummer whenever a bubble pops, so each of the four computers is pre-programmed with the same goal: to extend the short lives of these bubbles as long as possible by adjusting its speed and the rhythm of its movements to calibrate itself with the atmospheres around it. As the bubbles are formed and eventually pop, each computer uses the information harvested from the bubbles to better calibrate itself with its context. The goal is to use all the bubbles that have popped to extend the lives of all the bubbles to come.
Predicting how long a bubble in the future will last is no easy task. To do this, each computer relies on a different algorithm for predicting the future. One of these algorithms was originally designed to predict the future of the stock market, another to predict the future of climate change, a third to predict tomorrow’s weather, the last was designed to predict the outcome of political upheavals. I’ve borrowed these algorithms as there are currently no algorithms to predict the future of bubbles, as far as I know.
The result is a set of four computers, using bubbles, to predict the very near-term future.
Featured image courtesy of Giulia Manfroni.
