The inspiration for my installation came from the harsh period of isolation during the Covid-19 Lock-down phase, where the Dutch citizens (and citizens everywhere else in the world honestly) where advised to stay at home for an undefined period of time. During this time, my personal perception of time itself and the passing of each day intertwined to the point that the days just blended into one other. Also, during this time, a lot of news stations and various online resources each proclaimed that it was essential to adhere to one's daily Routines. This so that the person in isolation can have a little sense of structure within his/her daily life.
This is how Clive was created, a manifestation of the shared troubles endured during the lock down itself as the days and the routines fused together to an illogical mess. The main idea of the installation was that the person (in this case, Clive) tried to maintain his routines/basic daily tasks within the household (the exterior environment where Clive is located). The external forces influencing the actions of Clive are the people watching the Live-stream on twitch using certain commando's in the chat (Left, Right, Forward and Backward), The logic of Clive's interior hardware processes these commands to slight movements in the corresponding direction. The 'External Forces' in this case represent the influences of Covid-19, the Self-Isolation, the fading perception of the daily flow and the slow descent into madness.
Vimeo Video
How it's made
The process of getting the robot itself to move was a journey of trail and error, because I have some experience with Electronics I fortunately knew which parts to order and how these need to be connected. The Software part, however, was a different story. Many external component operating on different systems needed to communicate to each other to convert the commando's within the chat to physical responses within the electronics themselves. To make this all work I created a python script which could access my twitch page and listen to any chat messages being sent, after a message was received by the script it would figure out whether the message contained a command string (Left, Right, Forward or Backward all in lowercase). After recognition of a certain command the python script would call a web server GET request on the Arduino's IP adress with the corresponding command (The ESP-8622 enabled the possibility to create a basic web server where data could be transferred to). The Arduino would wait until a command was received and would turn on the instruction to move the motors in a specific way.
Then I raided thrift shops around Leiden in search of small furniture pieces and other tiny home decoration pieces for the exterior where Clive will be 'Living'. And after the initial work the only part that needed to be created was the exterior itself, and I heavily underestimated this task. Cardboard boxes needed to be cut and joined together to form the walls of the exterior parts. These parts, of course, needed some wallpaper to represent a homely atmosphere.