December 2008 Archives

For those unfamiliar with the 1987 film The Way Things Go by Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss, you might want to get better acquainted with a film that is essentially the documentation of what might be one of the largest contemporary art machines ever constructed. Encompassing a 100-foot long warehouse, the mechanism is actually a Rube Goldberg machine -- a deliberately overdesigned or overengineered apparatus designed to perform a simple task. In The Way Things Go the task is simple: "go."

The idea here is that motion (or carrying forward momentum) could be accomplished simply -- but where's the fun in that? Fischli and Weiss combine the right amounts of absurdity, logic-defying feats of gravity, split-second timing and lots of fire and dangerous looking chemistry experiments to make things "go" for almost half an hour. I just got a DVD copy of The Way Things Go ($14.99) as a thoughtful holiday gift. I originally saw it on a big screen while working on a robotics art show in Berlin in 1997 and no one knew the name in English so it took me a while to re-connect with it. The whole thing is 30 minutes of amazingness, and while there may be a few spots that look edited together, it doesn't take away from the fun (or astonishment) one bit. The DVD is remastered in terrific quality, and has artist bios, a bibliography and individual scene access for extra nerdiness.

For The Way Things Go, Fischli and Weiss used household items, junkyard finds, balloons, chemical reactions, gasoline, tires, tea kettles, slides, fans, garbage bags... and so much more, in the most whimsical manners imaginable. Apparently in May 2003, Honda's advertising firm Wieden+Kennedy thought it was really cool too -- and after Fischli and Weiss repeatedly refused requests for use of The Way Things Go for a Honda commercial, the car company made an ad called Cog. While impressive as an ad *and* a Goldberg machine, it was a pretty blatant takeaway from Fischli and Weiss' film -- and Wieden+Kennedy eventually admitted to copying a sequence of weighted tires rolling uphill, costing Cog a Grand Prix prize at the 2004 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Here is four lovely minutes from The Way Things Go:

Here is Honda's copycat Cog -- one success after a reported 605 failures:

This was an event I regret not seeing, though fortunately there's lots of video: apparently every year the snug, smug North Bay city and community of Sausalito's Yacht Club has a Lighted Boat Parade for the holidays. This year they were joined by the White Holly, a high endurance vessel that was put to the test by a handful of local machine artists who probably gave the parade the show of its life.

Geeked.info wasn't there, but has a fantastic roundup of the spectacle including video and images, snip:

Unfortunately I wasn't there, but I saw multiple comments on my Twitter stream of friends mentioning going on a boat, needing ear protection, etc. The best being "It's like we took Crude Awakening and stuck it on a ship. There's nowhere to run or hide. God help us." I wasn't fully aware of what was planned until the next day.

So what was on the White Holly? Well up front there was Epiphany, a 25′ steel sculpture by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito that many remember from the Crude Awakening installment at Burning Man 2007 or maybe Maker Faire 2008. It had a "beating" heart of fire. There was El Diablo, a jet engine repurposed for shooting fire (and being noisy) by Jack Schroll. There were also flame effects built by the Flaming Lotus Girls and Bob Hofman installed on the boat amidst the Christmas lights. Don't forget the Tesla coil hanging off the side of the boat upside down sending arcs into the water. And to top it all off, the loudest air raid siren ever produced, the Victory Siren, announced to the entire area that the White Holly had arrived. (...read and watch more, geeked.info)

He's a nice man, and he's got a good point here. This is Douglas Irving Repetto's Distributed Squirrel Cage for Parallel Processing (music.columbia.edu). This could possibly make the Internet Archive run faster, if only they implemented the right amount of nuts -- the piece is made of wood, glue, rubber bands, and paper (2008). Just add squirrels and your network will be literally up and running in no time.

It struck me when I saw this photo of "Pica the painter robot" from the Center for Intelligent Robots at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology that Pica was not unlike Chico MacMurtrie's drawing robot -- a big, monkey-like mechanical beast that would, pen in hand, draw interpretively on paper as MacMurtrie's musical creatures played songs during the artist's Ancestral Path midi-controlled musical robot phase, seen in part below (drawbot in background):

You can watch and listen to an example of the 1997 show here; I worked for Chico's Amorphic Robot Works on this show as crew for several weeks in Lisbon, Portugal and Berlin, Germany in 1997 so I did indeed help fix and move the machine(s). That's the personal Pica connection; Chico made his art machines into machine artists, like Pica.

Now, the makers of Pica are getting ready to create the world's first (or so they say) Robotic Theater, which will make its debut on Dec. 27 by performing the musical "The Phantom of the Opera." The China Post says,

The theater is comprised of four intelligent robots developed by the Center for Intelligent Robots at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology.
They include a male robot named Thomas and a female robot named Janet, who can walk and are equipped with silicon facial muscles that enable them to mimic the facial expressions and lip motions of a human being. The other two members of the theater are Pica the painter and Ringo the jazz drummer, who move on two wheels.

Chen Shi-shuenn, president of the university, said the Dec. 27 performance will feature Thomas and Janet as the two leading characters in "The Phantom of the Opera". (read more, chinapost.com.tw, via Engadget)

San Francisco Bay Area industrial arts space NIMBY is where a lot of kinetic and machine art organizations and individuals had collaborative space to create, and it was recenty shut down by a fire -- leaving a lot of machine artists in about a hundred different flavors of pain. NIMBY was home to favorites and friends like Kinetic Steam Works and Interpretive Arson (creators of Dance Dance Immolation). Talking to the artists after the fire would bring moments of indescribable grief -- just hold a silently crying art mechanic at a party (as I did) and nothing more needs to be said. All of the artists have banded together to secure a new space, and they only have two days left to raise the remaining funds for the deposit -- due this Monday, December 15.

All the details on donating and helping out -- plus examples of the fine work that came from NIMBY's old space is in Refuse To Live Vicariously - Please Help Support NIMBY (laughingsquid.com). Donations are tax-deductible.

Update 12.17: Great news, and yay for community fundraising -- I just got word that NIMBY has secured the space!

I was deeply regretful that I missed the opening of the Applied Kinetic Arts show at the Y2Y gallery in San Francisco. It opened on November 21, but fortunately runs through January 23, 2009 so we have plenty of time to enjoy the incredible work of Nemo Gould, Reuben Margolin, Christopher Palmer, Mark Galt and Benjamin Cowden -- also, Gould's astounding Giant Squid is on display.

Y2Y gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 1-5pm, at 251 Balboa Street, San Francisco, CA 94118; 415.221.5012.

While not blogging about their insane cowboy adventures going across North America chasing down Case Traction Engines, Kinetic Steam Works is also looking for artists and capable hands willing to 'upgrade' to steam art. This Bay Area outfit is ragtag but skilled and smart; highly recommended if you're looking for a place to plug in your fabrication and mechanical skills.

Nemo Gould is a beloved Bay Area kinetic and machine artist; for two decades he's been building static and kinetic machine art using everything from used dentures to old sewing machine motors. Even his life-sized, sinister looking alien robot sculptures -- such as General Debris -- have a touch of humor, and it's difficult not to smile when perusing a portfolio loaded with thinks like Catmonkey and Junkyard Dog. He's well known for Venus Flytrap:

Yet when I met Gould at Maker Faire 2008 and did a live Qik interview, the supreme piece of his ouvre, to me, was his Giant Mechanical Squid -- seen fittingly in this video shot by Scott Beale:

I insist that you start by clicking right over to the Engadget gallery and video, featuring the steel robotic sculptures of machine art mastermind Choe U Ram. The pieces are from the now-closed show Anima Machines -- and are like Arthur Ganson's larger works after a forced infusion of H. R. Geiger's thick blackened alien blood and midwifed from a screaming CNC mill into the hands of a very evil horticulturalist. Just sayin'. I'm in love.

Additionally, Robot Watch has a huge, detailed report on the Anima Machines show (set in an abandoned Japanese bathhouse) and more videos of Ram's exhibition than anywhere else. Do not miss.

Image via eightprime.

While it's tempting to begin this blog with Jean Tinguely, one of my all-time favorite artists in the whole world is Arthur Ganson. Mechanics, kinetics, shape, shadow and illusion are all midwifed into nearly-hallucinogenic articulated imps that must be seen (in motion) to be fully appreciated. Love the use of simple gearing (hooray for worm gears!), and his general affection for creating his own gears out of wire.

Simple, and beautiful. Look: NOVA's compilation video. Also: mechanized sculpture videos + images.

After the jump, a couple of my favorite Ganson videos.

* * * * * * *