Wheelchair

Robotic castor chair and wheelchair. Prototypes, 2014–2018 — Samuel Bianchini. Didier Bouchon: electronics and software (behaviour programming). Colin Bouvry: development of the localisation and mapping system (SLAM). Hardware build: Adrien Bonnerot. Designed and prototyped within the “Behavioral Objects” research strand of the Reflective Interaction team at EnsadLab, the laboratory of the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs – Université PSL.

With thanks to Emmanuel Mahé, Filipe Pais, Emanuele Quinz and Nicolas Reeves. Fauteuil handicapé, prototype #2, 2018, shown at “Nous ne sommes pas le nombre que nous croyons être”, Cité internationale des arts, Paris, February 2018. Photographs: © Samuel Bianchini – ADAGP. Two chairs share a space, a room or a stage empty of anything else.

One is a castor chair, an office chair, a decision-maker’s chair. The other is a wheelchair, for the disabled. The first moves gently, alone, with a highly variable, hesitant rhythm. It seems to head towards the other, to come close to it at times, as if to push it, but it rarely succeeds; it looks crude, labouring in its movements. When it finally does manage to push the wheelchair, it is in order to disengage from it, just as clumsily, as though overtaken by doubt and uncertainty.

The second chair, the wheelchair, does not move by itself; it waits to be pushed. It marks the whole scene with its symbolic force, and amplifies here the uncertainty of the place given to disability.