Fish-Bird: Circle B - Movement C, is an interactive auto-kinetic artwork that investigates the dialogical possibilities between two robots, in the form of wheelchairs, that can communicate with each other and with their audience through the modalities of movement and written text.

Assisted by integrated thermal printers, the chairs -write intimate letters on slips of paper that they then drop to the floor, impersonating two characters (Fish and Bird) who fall in love but cannot be together due to ‘technical difficulties’.

Spectators entering the installation space disturb the intimacy of the two objects, yet create the strong potential for other dialogues to exist. The spectator can see the traces of their previous written exchanges on the floor, and may become aware of the disturbance that they have caused. Dialogue occurs kinetically through the wheelchair’s perception of the body language of the audience, and on the audiences reaction to the unexpected disturbance would be to converse about trivial subjects, like the weather. Through emerging dialogue, the wheelchairs may become more ‘comfortable’ with their observers, and start to reveal intimacies on the floor again.

Each wheelchair writes in a distinctive cursive font that reflects its ‘personality’. The written messages are subdivided into two categories: personal messages communicated between the two robots, and messages written by a robot to a human participant. The messages are an amalgamation of words, verses and sentences selected from a large database containing excerpts of the poetry of Anna Akhmatova, fragments of love-letters donated to the project by people over the period of three years, and text composed by Mari Velonaki.

The Fish-Bird series have been exhibited in 13 countries.