Speedster-snail saga - March 2023
A work by Dominique Peysson
Idea and design of the mechanism Dominique Peysson
Engineering Christian Laroche and Dominique Peysson
Design Dominique Peysson and Christian Laroche
Speedster-snail is a small vehicle powered solely by the snail itself, like a bicycle. The ribbon on which the snail is standing enables it to turn the wheels of the bolide and move at a much higher speed than its usual mode of locomotion: around 100 times faster than its usual speed.
The "Speedster-snail saga» project is not an apology for speed and increase, on the contrary. It takes a light-hearted approach to questions that are nonetheless major issues, such as the continual drive for performance, the cult of rivalry and the augmentation of living organisms. It poses the question of communication between species and the ever-stronger relationship we are developing between living things and technology in an offbeat way.
I 'augment« the little beasts, but always with respect. To offer them an extension of their field of experience, without rushing them. However, there is a critical component to this work. On the anthropocentric conception that we project onto the animal kingdom, for example. I generate a whole little world of devices, which raises the question of communication between species and the ever-stronger relationship we are developing between living things and technology. Of course, this can be seen as a transposition of transhumanism. Are we going to seek endlessly to surpass the limits of what is possible, or might we be thinking more along the lines of sharing new ways of seeing the world between ourselves and the different kingdoms of living beings, while respecting and understanding each other? Without necessarily trying to go faster and faster, always...
My artistic work engages in cross-disciplinary reflection and work on life and its entanglement with technical processes, on mergers and hybridisations between the living and the technosciences. I explore imaginary forms of living-technology interaction, on different scales: that of protocells and their gradual evolution into living matter, or exoskeletons for insects...
What would happen if we put all our technological advances at the service of an animal, to multiply the strength not of a man, but of another living being?
I chose to work with a species that has a particularly powerful musculature: The garden snail. The petit-gris. How can it be strengthened so that it can excel?
Speedster-snails have taken a long time to develop, from the first Lego prototype to the latest version of the mobile snail...
Here are some extracts from the first outings of our speedster-snail and its drivers, Horace, Chloé, Eva, Claude...
The cars were designed in 3D
The world's first snail-mobile PERFORMANCE
The world's first performance by mobile snails took place in February 2023 in Les Pilles, in the Drôme provençale, at the Pilanthropes café.
Speedster-snail saga exhibition at Saint-Exupéry
Group exhibition For the love of sport
From 21 March to 10 June 2023, with Pierre Larauza, Thomas Molles, Frédéric Liver, //////////fur//// (Volker Morawe and Tilman Reiff). Many thanks to Clémentine Treu for inviting us to Saint-Ex and for curating the exhibition.
