An installation that runs once, in one room, can be a curiosity. An installation that runs a second time, in a different building, with a different visitor flow, is a system being tested. For the New Museum's inaugural exhibition, Anicka Yi Studio proposed exactly that test: bring the aerobes — the autonomous aerial machines from Tate Modern's In Love With The World — into a new space, and see whether the behavior holds.
Sitara built the original artificial-life system for Tate in 2020: simulation, visualization, and control software for machines that sense visitors and one another and decide how to move, not on a script but on modeled instinct. For the New Museum, that system had to be re-grounded in unfamiliar architecture — a new flight volume, new tracking geometry, new failure modes to anticipate. We updated the flight-control integration (OptiTrack motion tracking), retuned the behavioral simulation for the new space, and rebuilt the camera-based visitor-tracking pipeline that lets the aerobes respond to who's actually in the room.
We also stayed with the work. A technician trained by Sitara is on-site for the length of the run, and we own the operations manual that tells the New Museum's staff what to do when something needs attention. This is the difference between installing an artwork and operating a system: the software doesn't stop being our responsibility at the ribbon-cutting.
New Humans: Memories of the Future is on view at the New Museum through August 23, 2026.