A State of Sin

An installation commissioned by Arts at CERN for a series of exhibition on tour around Europe in 2018-2020.

A State of Sin is a gang of hopeful robots sampling randomness from the world, and making it available. Mathematical randomness is critical to many historical and contemporary processes, from democracy and prognostication, to gambling, cryptography, scientific research and computer security - but it is also the one thing that computers cannot generate. Rather, randomness must be acquired from the environment, in all of its messiness and unpredictability, much as creative inspiration and scientific imagination is a product of a constant re-encounter with the world itself.

The eight robots are constructed from custom PCBs, Arduino boards, embedded SIM cards, sensors, household materials. They are inherently networked, and may also be accompanied by a dashboard display. They report their findings to a central website which also documents the work.

→ Project website: random.jamesbridle.com

→ More images of the work and the installation

→ Essay about the work at booktwo.org