Mechanized Eccentric Series refers to the László Moholy-Nagy concept in which the centrality of the human body in traditional theater was ultimately subsumed in a mechanical rendering and abstract play of stage action and movement.

Stage is a metaphorical space, a fictitious environment which we wish to populate with machines and cybernetic organisms embodying evocative behaviors; it is a surrealistic immersive space where the public becomes at the same time the observer and the observed.

Being staged, machines are not set as silent scenery but elevated to the status of performers. We wish to confront the public with this mis-enscène of the inert that is suddenly sensitive and expressive, a dramatic territory of the performing arts reserved for (and tacitly attributed) to humans.

The Mechanized Eccentric Series is a collection of several installations and performances united together in a large spectacle. The series includes: L’Assemblee: 48 robots laid out on an arena; Colonie 01: 8 robots and 1 central robot, a comment on nanotechnology; Colonie 02: 8 robots caught in cages; The robotic characters of Armageddon (an operetta for robots) and a choir of 12 members; and the two main robots of Le Procès. Each robot is equipped with speaker(s), light(s) and motion(s) enabling the whole environment to become a vast surround soundscape. The performances include 6 voices of ambient sound plus a range (8 to 32) of independent robot sounds.

Louis-Philippe Demers (CA/DE) is a multidisciplinary artist using machines as media. He has worked on the conception and production of several large-scale interactive robotic installations, realizing more than 200 machines. From 1994 to 1998 he was the president of the Kunst Macchina Production Company which succeeded in establishing itself as the new generation of computer control for the stage. Since 2001, Demers has been a professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe.