Astral Twin

Astral Twin is a robotic audiovisual installation about the tension and harmony between human-coded logic and machine-emergent behaviour. The LED wall behind the arms works as a membrane between the mechanical and the virtual, turning their motion into shifting light, colour and form. Six editions, 2023–2026.

Six editions

Editions	Visuals	Robots	My role
12 Franklin (private), OFFF Montreal, We Belong Here · Brooklyn	GLSL fluid	KUKA, then UFactory 850 (UF850) — motion authored elsewhere, recorded off the arm	generative visuals
OFFF Barcelona, Vibecon, Sónar+D	POPs + GLSL particles	2–4× UF850 — Motion-Core	visuals (with Pasakorn Nontananadh) + robot pipeline

From the first edition the arm drove the fluid: its motion set emission, injection and where the brush sat on the canvas, read through a twin of the arm that later became TD Robot Control.

What changed across the six is which end of that link I owned. On the first three the motion arrived already finished: authored in Grasshopper on the KUKA, then recorded on the arms themselves and looped. By the particle editions I had built Motion-Core and was authoring the motion in Blender with my own addon, validating it and commanding the arms as well as reading them.

At Sónar+D the arms ran a playlist of eight scenes: Birth, Solo, Synced, Poke, Line, Donut, Final and Reset.