Sarah Rubidge's interest in this project emerges from previous work with interactive installations grounded in a choreographic sensibility. These installations have favoured a meditative quality and required that the participant submit themselves to the installation, even as they tried to control the way it looked or sounded. This installation takes this intention one step further, for here, when the viewer is interactively engaged with the installation, the data that is modulating the development of the image lies beneath the level of reflective consciousness, and therefore beyond the conscious control of the viewer.

Beau Lotto’s interest in the project emerges from his work in science and art, where he aims to explain and explore the mind in relation to its ecology. Underpinning his work on human, bee and artificial life colour perception is the idea that we do not see the world as it is, but see instead the consequence of what proved useful to see in our past interactions with the world. In Fugitive Moments he aimed to create an interaction that blurs the boundary between cause and effect, between viewer and viewed. During the course of the project he and Erwan Le Martelot, in discussion with Sarah Rubidge on the potential textures and motional characteristics of the artistic outcomes and with contributions from Daniel Hulme, Richard Clarke and David Malkin from lottolab, designed an evolutionary computer system based on principles of Complexity that enables the user to initiate emergent – and thus unpredictable – perceptual rhythms of colour and motion. In Fugitive Moments these are projected onto large screens in a gallery space.

The Fugitive Moments exhibition at the Otter Gallery comprises two individual installation environments. In normal circumstance the imagery develops autonomously, with the evolutionary interventions into the system being generated internally by the system itself. At certain times during the exhibition viewers could participate in the experiments that underlay the project. Experiments took place in situ in the Fugitive Moments I installation during exhibitions.

Fugitive Moments I constitutes a display of single-colour kinetic imagery generated from systems designed by Sarah Rubidge using the Fugitive Moments software. The imagery is displayed on a large screen, embedded in the walls of a velvet-lined black room. The shaping of the imagery has emerged from extensive experiments with the software, and has been designed to facilitate a physical response to the imagery as it is viewed. This installation incorporates a continuation of the series of experiments undertaken in lottolab into the use of physiological data to mediate the evolutionary progress of the Fugitive Moments system.

Fugitive Moments II constitutes a large 3-dimensional hanging structure, a ‘factured’ 2D screen installation predicated on principles of visual perception. Conceived by Beau Lotto it was designed by both collaborators . In Fugitive Moments II visitors to the installation are invited to design their own manifestations of the piece using the Fugitive Moments II computer software. The Installation also displays pre-designed imagery generated from systems designed by Sarah Rubidge.