Nebula

2018

24x7x4.5m

Fans, electronics, paper particles

Arduino

Nicolas Guichard & Béatrice Lartigue, Lab212

Nebula considers connections and interactions from the smallest to the most global scale, bringing into question how all things connect and interact with each other.

The installation models a living ecosystem: every presence within it is a disruption, every movement a cause whose effects ripple far beyond the intention that generated them.

9 fans are triggered according to the proximity of moving visitors. Their breath displaces paper particles that drift, accumulate, and form unpredictable configurations.

The visitor is not a spectator of this landscape - they are its agent.

Nebula explores the concept of homeostasis: when a critical threshold of accumulated particles is reached, the system self-regulates, seeking an equilibrium that human presence continually destabilises. This regulatory mechanism mirrors the dynamics of complex systems — biological, climatic, social — in which the intervention of a single element, however small, reshapes the whole.

The landscape activated at the opening of the exhibition is lost forever, in perpetual reconfiguration. There is no return to an initial state, no memory within the system.

This irreversibility lies at the heart of the work: it reminds us that every presence leaves a mark, and that certain balances, once broken, can never reconstitute themselves in quite the same way.

Signal Film & Media, Barrow, GBR

Loren Slater

Signal Film & Media