Device Volume 3: Traveling Device Preview

8/12/2019 Device Volume 3: Traveling Device Preview

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By Gareth Branwyn

The desire to y is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on theinnite highway of the air. - Wright Brothers

We humans are fascinated by our machines, the mechanical extensions of ourselves that we engineer to amplify ourbiology (and overcome its limitations). Machines give us superpowers. The diversity and complexity of the machinesweve invented are staggering. But of all these mechanical expressions of ourselves, we hold a special place in our hearts,and our fevered dreams, for vehicles, for they are the devices that grant us speed, motion, and travel. And they seduce uswith the promise of freedom.

When we climb into a vehicle a car, a plane, a motorcycle, a rocket ship, a tank and assume its controls, in thatmoment, we become a softwired cyborg part human, part machine. And that cyborg instantly becomes alive withgeographic possibility. Where do you want to go today? The sky and the open road are calling to us.

It is these three principle aspects: the ingenuity of these machines construction, the thrill and challenge in the cyberneticmarriage of human and vehicle, and the many possibilities they open to us in physical space and within our imaginations that give vehicles such pride of place amongst the machinery of our lives.

Going all the way back to the Romans, up through the Italian Futurists, the Kerouacian Beats, and beyond, speed, motion,and travel have long been associated with opening up the imagination and oneself to possibilities. In Jack Kerouacs Beatmasterpiece, On the Road , travel, constant motion come to represent the very act of being creatively alive. To be fullyand vividly alive is to always be in some type of dynamic motion.

In Traveling Device, an impressive group of sculptors have been brought together to explore our beloved machines ofmotion and how they speak to our longing for travel and the transcendence of biological limitations.

Rik Allens retro-futuristic visions of 50s rocket ships rendered in the ancient industrial art of blown glass mix evocativevisionary powers with intensely beautiful objects. You cant look at one of Riks pieces, which usually sport a 50s reddiner chair at their heart, and not want to take a seat in the past so you can wistfully peer into a dozen imagined futures.

With his latest pieces, Greg Brotherton continues to deliver the most impressively constructed objects of surrealityand struggle. Besides the jaw-dropping beauty and craftmanship of his work, Gregs Kafkaesque world of man-machinehybrids, frequently laboring at strange, inexplicable tasks, never fail to evoke equally strong and strange emotions.

In Grard Cambons fantastical trash, wood, and tin can world, gray grotesques travel around in multi-tiered cars, humpybuses, and amorphous racers. Hunks of wood, clay, tin, dirt, and rust seem to coalesce into a world fraught with thetension between the freedom expressed in the movement and the whimsical vehicles and the Orwellian characters going

for the ride. Theres an ambiguity and suggestibility in Cambons use of shapes, materials, and construction that forceviewers to create their own narratives about what they might be looking at.

Cambon doesnt venerate cars, but he does celebrate the semiotics of freedom they embody. Its hard not to look atthe work of James Corbett and not see motion blur behind his motorcycles, race cars, and leaping cyber-horses. And tohear the heavy metal thunder. Its also fun to look at his perfectly integrated pieces and tease out the cleverly reusedcomponents lurking within them. Hey, those wheels are bicycle chain, That shock absorbers a spark plug, Cool gasketwindshield! Parts that once made real vehicles go turned into art vehicles that now move imaginations.


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Kinetic found object artist and Device Gallery regular Nemo Gould always brings dizzying levels of ingenuity, sharphumor, and impressive craftsmanship to his work. For the Traveling collection, all of that is here embodied in Gouldeanhelicopters, cycles, spaceships, and strange riding beasts, mounted by equally strange riders. As impressive as Nemos workis in print, its when you see his pieces actuate that their humor, theatricality, and deeper impacts are fully appreciated.

Looking at the work of Dan Jones , its as though vintage race cars and dragsters from the early 20th century punchedthrough some membrane in spacetime and began morphing into fantastic racers, ying machines, and alien cybermen.These pieces denitely look as though they come to life and blaze off into the aether as soon as you take your eyes offthem.

Even Kyle Fokkens name sounds like antique aerospace. His toys look like theyve just own in from some slightlyaskew universe next door where everythings been designed in a funhouse mirror, offsetting your expectations just enough to demand your attention in guring out what it is that youre looking at.

Paul Loughridge is very much a classic found-object artist. His source objects remain clearly visible and celebratedwithin the idiosyncratic pieces he creates. Some people meld, others weld. Pauls a welder. Part of the fun of Pauls workis clearly seeing the constituent parts that make up his creations and how they were so cleverly incorporated. Seeing, inLoughbridges hands, how a lunch pail and two lm canisters became an Airstream trailer, cant help but inspire your owncreative ways of seeing.

One thematic thread that runs throughout this collection is usually-immoveable objects and organic entitiestransmutated into vehicles. No ones work embodies this biomechanical mutability more provocatively than MichihiroMatsuoka . Matsuoka skillfully combines industrial resin, resin clay, enamel paint, and weathered acrylics with car parts,springs, nuts, and bolts to create objects that are whimsically cute, frequently cuddly, while still looking like they mightfart and belch oil fumes and youd get tetanus if they drew your blood.

Pierre Matter presents some of the most intensely surreal, muscular, and unambiguously biomechanical pieces in thiscollection. Using copper, bronze, brass, steel, and wood, Pierre fabricates ying mantis ships, winged hot air balloons,whale ships, and eagle ghter planes. The God in Pierre Matters universe never bothered to pre-sort his biological andmechanical components while he was forging the world.

While the work of many of these artists has a very industrial, even high-tech or biomech feel, Monty Montys pieces arerefreshingly bucolic, harkening back to a time of homemade and village woodshop toys of wood, tin, and brass. Lookingat Montys sculptures (and many of the others here), you cant help but see him puttering in his studio, having a clever andplayful conversation with his junk out of which emerges these enchanting pieces.

Oscillations between the innocent and the ominous can be found in many pieces in Traveling Device . Childish wonder andmischief frequently mix with military hardware and dangerous vehicles in the powerful work of Olivier Pauwels . Cherubicchildren in diving gear pilot suicide torpedoes as other doll-babies pilot tanks, helicopters, racing bikes, and cars. Theres areckless energy and dynamic beauty to all of Oliviers creations.

While Pauwels crazed-eye kids pilot cobbled-together creations, in Guillermo Rigattieris mercurial visionary world, theman-creature-machine chimera enjoy far more ambiguous boundaries. The rivets dont distinguish between esh andsteel as welded and wrought metals are super-heated to forever smudge the distinctions between the born and the made.

Michael Ulmans sculptures look so convincingly like real powered models, youd be forgiven for looking for the onswitches and where to add the model engine fuel. Ulman goes to great pains to engineer that exact twitch in his viewer,that perennial child-like desire to re up the self-powered toy.

Exploring the complex and iconic nature of our vehicles (and our equally complex relationships with them), the mythicfreedoms encoded in speed, motion, and travel, and the possibilities all of this awakens in us are explored in this inspiring,thoughtful, and highly entertaining volume. So, strap on your leather ying cap, don your driving gloves, slip into yourmotorcycle boots and zip up your bomber jacket, its time to take a trip on the Traveling Device .

Gareth Branwyn writes on the intersection of art, technology, and culture. He wrote for Wired for 12 years and has written or editedmore than 12 books on technology, media, and DIY culture. He is the former Editorial Director at MAKE and his most recent book iscalled Borg Like Me (& Other Tales of Art, Eros, and Embedded Systems).


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RIKALLEN


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Verge Continuum , 201Blown glass, steel

67 x 20 x 20


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My work is as much about outer space as inner space. At rst glance, the work may seem to beall about the exploration of the cosmos, but acloser look reveals more humble elements that

speak of memory and transparency, revealinginner and outward perspectives.

By incorporating elements that appear wornand experienced, as well as vestiges of an

earlier era, I hope to give the work a sense ofexperimentation, invention, and exploration.My intent is to open up the imaginations ofviewers whose own narratives shift as theirminds move from exterior perspective of thesevessels to inner possibilities. - Rik Allen

Rik Allen was born in Providence, Rhode Island,and has a B.A. in Anthropology from FranklinPierce University (NH). In 1995, Rik came tothe Northwest to work at Pilchuck GlassSchool, and also became a member of theWilliam Morris sculpture team, specializing in

engraving, cutting, and nishing glass sculpturefor 12 years.

In 2005, Rik established a glass and sculpturestudio with his wife, artist Shelley MuzylowskiAllen at their property in Skagit County,Washington. In addition to being artists, Rikand Shelley have taught internationally at theToyama Institute of Glass in Toyama, Japan, andthe International Glass Festival in Stourbridge,England. They have also taught nationally,including the Penland School of Craft,Pittsburgh Glass Center, and at Pilchuck.

Rik has had solo exhibitions of his sculpturalwork and installations throughout the country,including Seeker at the Museum of NorthwestArt, La Conner, Washington, Innersphere at theScience Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, andat Blue Rain Gallery, Traver Gallery, and ThomasRiley Galleries. His current series of work hasbeen in the form of spacecraft, rockets, andscientic apparatus. While many of Riks pieceshave a reference to his curiosity for science,they also convey humor, simple narratives, anda lightheartedness that is embodied in much ofscience ctions antiquated vision of the future.

His work has been featured and reviewedin American Craft Magazine, American ArtCollector, Glass Art Magazine, and LaunchMagazine, and is held in national andinternational private collections.

Unwelt Drifter, 2012Blown glass, silver, steel

31.5 x 10 x 10


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Ocularious Otonaut, 2010Blown glass, silver, mixed metals and materials

36 x 14 x 14


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Gnostica, 2009Blown glass, aluminum, silver, steel

16 x 19 x 9


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Hexadial Perceptipod (Ayeno Kungfu), 2010Blown glass, silver, steel

16 x 18 x 8

Documents

Device Volume 3: Traveling Device Preview