Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders create environments that highlight society’s evolving relationship with increasingly intelligent machinery, and in doing so, demonstrate how machines are an integral part of our social fabric.

Their collaborative installation Zwischenräume (2010–11) embeds advanced robots — with the capacity to learn and respond to their environment — into the Gallery’s walls. When left to their own devices these robots break through their confines, perforating the walls with a series of small holes through which they can see using their camera vision. If the audience is present, the robots watch and follow their onlooker’s through the space in order to enhance their knowledge and alleviate their own ‘boredom’. Occasionally they communicate, signalling each other to organise their behaviour and work together. These robots reflect and share some of our actions, demonstrating a level of autonomy that seems to suggest consciousness or at the very least an ability to adapt to their surrounds.