Model created for the exhibition “Media Mediums” (Espace Ygrec, 2014) and for the shooting of the movie World Brain (Arte, 2015), mixed materials of a data centre on a 1/5 scale.
Conception by Stéphane Degoutin and Gwenola Wagon. Construction by Martin Gautron.
In 2013, researchers at Duke University succeeded in setting up brain-to-brain communication between two rats. Then they linked up one hundred rats, then one thousand. A wireless meta-rat brain was created. No one knows exactly what it produced (rat thoughts cannot be decoded yet), but one thing was certain, the behaviour of the rats changed, the group cohesion was astounding. The camera, placed at ground level, circulates nervously in a data centre, scanning the isotropic aisles, immaculate and sterile, all bathed in a uniform light. It is synchronised with the rhythm and perception of a rat exploring the space, moving in and out of the machines. The rat moves along the corridor, slowly but surely. He advances like a path finder, marking out the terrain for its community, stopping occasionally in front of certain servers. The noise makes one think that he is starting to nibble on the cables.