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Rude Mechanicals: Art Meets Machine!
Wednesday, August 3rd
Doors open at 6.30 pm, presentations start
at 7.00 pm
Seattle
Art Museum’s Pletscheeff Auditorium, with
music and machine art in the SAM Lobby
ALL AGES; ADMISSION IS FREE (suggested
$5 donation)
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Jack Dollhausen, “I Would Rather That
They Made You Dance”… When told that
his sculptures made an art critic think, Jack Dollhausen
said “I would rather that they made you dance”.
“Think binary numbers. Think the multi-layered
fugues of Bach. Think a chopped and channeled hot
rod, old flying saucer movies, a pond cloudy with
algae. Las Vegas odds, and the coolest magic you know,
and the hardest mathematics. Now put those thoughts
into motion, and you get a feeling of Jack Dollhausen’s
art. I never believed, actually believed, in electrons
until I encountered this work. Granted, we’re
engaged in mad tangos with sub-atomic particles every
instant, but Jack makes the cosmic dance visible…
“All of my work comes from a pursuit of sound
and light, movement and change, and unpredictable
effects,” Jack says. For thirty years, he has
created light-space and sound-space, an invisible
architecture surrounding each work; when a viewer
breaks into that space, the piece responds in various
ways. Thus, this art allows us to participate consciously
in the perpetual, complex oscillations in the universe,
an experience ranging from the merely startling to
the downright psychedelic. In other words, here’s
your chance to flirt with radiant energy. And it flirts
back.” (From “Persistence of Vision: the
Art of Jack Dollhausen” by Aden Ross - http://www.wsu.edu/~jackdoll/jak/adenross.htm
for full essay). In this presentation, Jack Dollhausen
talks informally about 30 years of machine art, taking
us on an interactive tour of his art and projects
past and present. http://www.wsu.edu/~jackdoll/
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Karen Marcelo is Survival
Research Labs’s Tele-Obliteration Engineer,
and founder of the San Francisco branch of the dorkbot
family of forums for people interested in art and
technology. Karen operated the Sparkshooter at SRL’s
recent Los
Angeles performance, and creates the software
for their tele-operated machines. She also collaborates
with Australia-based performance artist, STELARC,
most recently on his prosthetic head. Karen will talk
about her experiences with SRL and beyond. http://karenmarcelo.org
tells you more.
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Kal Spelletich founded SEEMEN,
his interactive machine art performance collective,
in 1988. Since then, Kal has performed, exhibited
and lectured worldwide, collaborating with Survival
Research Labs and exploring the boundaries between
fear, control and exhilaration by giving his audience
members the opportunity to operate and control some
fascinating and frequently downright dangerous machinery.
Kal discusses 18 years of interactive machine art
performances and more.
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Peter Reiquam, Art of the Machine: Machine
Sculptures (and the Machines that Make Them)…
Seattle-based public and machine artist Peter Reiquam
creates interactive art that taps into iconic imagery
often related to childhood, from Evel Knievel to thrashing
sharks and toy trains – all with a calmly expressed
but disconcerting twist. Peter will be describing
his art and the machines and processes that inspire
him, showing slides of some of his machine pieces
and of the industrial processes and machines he uses
to drive and create his work.
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Machine Art from the collective of Seattle-based
artists, technologists and activists currently building
The Machine, the largest-ever Burning Man
machine art installation, for 2005. The Machine is
an enormous kinetic sculpture, operated by its audience,
that will grow and change over the course of the Burning
Man event before ultimately destroying itself. Parts
of The Machine will be at SAM, along with a video
showing work on its construction so far.
http://themach12e.org.
Music from Tawney: the girl who listened through
a balloon underwater to a favourite sound and called
it music. Her primary focus when DJing is to ask questions
about the relationship and/or barrier between noise,
music, and sound and to never be satisfied with the
answer. Tawney is a co-founder and member of Seattle
Outsider Artist Project (S.O.A.P), and will
be spinning her distinctive brand of quiet noise and
layered organic, industrial and otherworldly sonic
textures after the presentations while you talk, check
out the machine art and make connections.
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If you have an announcement, a question, a request,
a comment, a work in progress, a pet peeve, a rant,
a headache, an exuberant expression of untrammeled
joy… the mic is yours. As we’re at SAM this
month, do try and find me before or during the presentations
if you want to talk, but just because we’re in
an art museum doesn’t mean we can’t open
dork!
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Jack Dollhausen: full resume is here:
http://www.wsu.edu/~jackdoll/jak/resume/resume.htm
Karen Marcelo: bio here: http://karenmarcelo.org/info.html
Peter Reiquam is a Seattle artist whose work
ranges from prints and drawings to sculptural furniture,
mechanical sculptures and public art projects. He
earned his B.F.A. in sculpture from the University
of Washington in 1982 and his M.F.A. in sculpture
from Yale University in 1984. He was employed as the
Head Technician and Head of the Sculpture Department
at Pratt Fine Arts Center for over ten years. Reiquam
served six years as a commissioner on the King County
Public Art Commission and has taught sculpture at
Pratt Fine Arts Center, Cornish College of the Arts
and the University of Washington School of Art. He
recently joined a group of Seattle area artists in
a new public art mentorship program at the City of
Seattle’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs
(formerly Seattle Arts Commission) to assist emerging
artists in the development of their first public art
projects. In addition to the production of his own
artwork, Reiquam’s business, New Art Projects
Company specializes in the fabrication and installation
of the work of a variety of other artists, architects
and designers.
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