Leonardo

Sculpture: Science Fiction MachinesAuthor(s): Charles AlexanderSource: Leonardo, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Spring, 1976), pp. 119-120Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1573118 .

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Leonardo, Vol. 9, pp. 119-120. Pergamon Press 1976. Printed in Great Britain

SCULPTURE: SCIENCE FICTION MACHINES

Charles Alexander*

On 19 June 1974, Granada's television programme 'Granada Reports' contained a review of the John Moore Exhibition at Liverpool and on the next even- ing's programme there was an item on one entitled 'The Even Moore', a cocky salon des refuses, organized by Peter O'Halligan (Dream Merchant), that opened in Liverpool on the 11th June. It was in the latter exhibi- tion that my 'Pandora's Box' was first shown. Granada's reporter described it as a sculpture for people who eat chickens. A little girl called Dawn, no more than two years old, visited the exhibiton each day, climbing up the stairs from the shop below where her mother worked, just to watch and listen to my chickens.

'Pandora's Box' (Fig. 1) is a sinister-looking dark wooden chest with a wooden moulding at top and bottom. The construction consists of a strong wooden frame covered with marine plywood sheet in order to give the impression of a strong solid piece of furniture. At the top of the front face is a small door with a brass lock and at the bottom of the rear face is an ominous thick electric cable that curls away to a small black box on a 3 ft. stand. In this box is played a tape recording of the noise made by lots of real chickens. (Some thought that I had recorded the sounds made at a

* Artist living at 209 Collingwood House, Dolphin Square, London SWI V 3ND, England. (Received 26 July 1974.)

fashionable opening of an art exhibition!) During the two weeks of the 'The Even Moore' show, the button for starting and stopping the tape recording wore out and had to be replaced and a new key to the door had to be obtained because someone had locked the door and had thrown the key away.

When 'Pandora's Box' is turned on, its walls vibrate; one hears the loud hum of the enclosed machine and of the recording of the screaming hens. All this was too much for one women who, after much urging, refused to unlock the door and look inside the box. On opening the door, one sees 40 chicken heads made of fibreglass bobbing up and down in a cage illuminated by a dim red light (Fig. 2).

The bobbing motion of the chicken heads is produced by the mechanism shown in Fig. 3. Drive is provided

Fig. 2. View of interior of 'Pandora's Box'.

Fig. 1. 'Pandora's Box', audio-kinetic object, wood, fibre- glass, mechanical system with electric motor drive, 4.4 x 4

x 4 ft, 1972. Fig. 3. View of mechanical set-up in interior of 'Pandora's

Box'.

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Charles Alexander

by the electric motor of a second-hand 35 mm. film- editing machine. I would be glad to supply details on the mechanism to anyone interested. The wire attached to a chicken head sometimes breaks, giving the strange impression that the chicken died. This mechanism otherwise worked quite reliably compared to the one that I had tried in which a head was equipped with an electromagnet. When the electromagnet was activated, the head shot up with such force that it smashed on hitting the top of the cage.

'Pandora's Box' was not a sudden inspiration but rather the result of my dissatisfaction with two previous attempts that I had made involving the same subject. In 1972 there was a satirical editorial in the September 1971 issue of The Ecologist (London) about a fictitious scientist who developed an expensive machine to replace

Fig. 4. Untitled, audio-kinetic object, 24 x 18 x 12 in, 1971.

chickens for producing eggs. This led me to materialize this idea in the form of a bright orange vending machine with a chrome-plated rooster sitting on top (Fig. 4). The vending machine had been constructed to dispense sandwiches. In my version, when lOp was inserted into it, a clucking sound was produced until the button for 'Brown' or 'White' eggs was pushed. Then, after a period of whirring and clanking sounds, a brown or a white plastic egg dropped into the wire basket at the bottom. During the construction of this object, which did not please me as regards its form, I visited a farm with chickens in batteries and got my idea for 'Pandora's Box'.

My attitude to the artifacts that I have made is similar to those of Timothy Hunkin [1] and Alan Gummerson [2]. I am not interested in art for art's sake and I have a distaste for what is called 'formalism'. Although the two examples that I have described involved motion, I am not particularly interested in kinetic art, but introduce it when I believe it is appro- priate for the idea to be presented. A recent 7 ft-high machine that I constructed, called 'The Mersey Man', is static and incorporates a deep-freeze refrigerator. When the British sculptor Anthony Caro saw my kinetic object, he strongly advised me to give up sculpture for work on television production.

The gap between much of contemporary fine art and other facets of life, including science and tech- nology, depresses me. I believe that good art contains intangible aspects. I am intrigued by sculpture with a big 'S' but not of the so-called 'pure' kind, which few people care for. My objects are visual jokes that are meant to surprise and relax viewers and they might be regarded as examples of 3-dimensional science fiction.

I am working on a more ambitious object involving both sculpture and painting, with a musical accompani- ment to a score composed by Robert Young. The object will be demountable and transportable by truck, as are pieces that one finds in fairgrounds, so that I can set it up at different festivals of art. This would overcome a major limitation of large, heavy traditional sculpture.

References

1. T. Hunkin, Sculpture: Fantasy Machines, Leonardo 4, 151 (1971).

2. A. Gummerson, On My Work with Verbal-Visual Puns and Assemblages, Leonardo 4, 59 (1971).

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