InterAccess, in collaboration with the 2004 Subtle Technologies Festival, presents the premier public exhibition of Infrasense, a web robot installation created by Robert Saucier (Montreal) and art collective KIT (Canada, UK, France).

The Infrasense project is an interactive installation that playfully deals with electronic virus culture. KIT and Saucier built three-dimensional representations of "Trojan horses" and "Bugs" – two common metaphors for viral activities affecting the Internet, computers and labs around the world.

Six models of Trojan horses are placed on parallel tracks throughout the gallery space. As the viral Trojan is a stand-alone program, so are the physical models by moving on their own for the duration of the exhibition. The movement is slow and steady – nearly imperceptible to the human eye. They cannot be controlled by gallery or website visitors, and emanate low-level, indiscernible sound from attached speakers, implying the carriage of hidden messages or information.

In contrast to Trojans, Bugs spread through systems like virtual wildfire. Three fast-moving Bugs roam around and between the slow-moving Trojan horses, controlled remotely by gallery or website visitors. The movement of the Bugs in such close proximity to the Trojan horses suggests a search for some sort of electronic connection in order to exploit, infect or destroy whatever information it discovers. Each Bug in the gallery is outfitted with a small, powerful microphone that amplifies the Trojan horse’s audio when the connection between virus and hardware is made.

Saucier is a Montreal-based robotics artist who teaches sculpture at the University of Quebec in Montreal. His work has been exhibited in Canada, Ireland, Britain and France, and includes a series of seven commissioned sculptures for the Quebec Ministry of Culture’s Integration of Art to Architecture program.

KIT is a group of artists/programmers/architects from the UK, Canada, and France that started in 1993. They have exhibited in numerous galleries, festivals, and museums in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Europe, Canada and the US.

This is the first project collaboration between Saucier and KIT. Infrasense will travel to a number of galleries in Canada, England, Belgium, the US and Northern Ireland through 2006.

Infrasense is part of the 2004 Subtle Technologies Festival.