Abstract Machine
Installation
Joan Grona Gallery: Blue Star Arts Complex, San Antonio, TX 2001
abstract machine was a site specific temporary full-body/full-room interactive installation. The space of the gallery was transformed into a mechanicl organism investigating the concept of "singularity," or the point where order emerges from chaos. Mechanism and structures from previous installations accreted onto/ around/ off a central elevated scaffold. Spectators were invited to enter this spine/nervous system and become part of the "abstract machine." Motion activated lights, motors, video monitors and recorded sound from previous installations activated the structures in response to this biological interface.
A passage from War in the Age of Intelligent Machines by Manuel De Landa informed the work:
"Self-organizing, mechanism independent, strucure building singularities (transition points where order spontaneously emerges out of chaos) have been conceptualized after intensescientific study over the past three decades as "abstract machines". Whether seen as phase transitions in physics;spontaneous assembly of chemical clocks; rivers and tsunamis in the hydrosphere, wind patterns and storm systems in the atmosphere...all exhibit at many different scales and levels of complexity, but support the same idea that, in the neighborhood of a singularity, a set of previously disconnected elements converge into a synergistic whole."
