Machines of Futility: Unproductive Technologies

This exhibition of interactive and kinetic art highlights artists making machines that use humor and absurdity to question the usefulness of technology. The exhibition includes artist Neil Mendoza’s Robotic Voice Activated Word Kicking Machine, which humorously visualizes how machines hear or don’t hear what we say, substituting an absurd apparatus for the unseen technology in our pockets and homes. In this case, the viewer’s spoken words come out of a horn-like tube as text and are kicked across a screen. The artist’s Anti-Vanity Mirror pokes fun at self(ie)-obsession, turning away as the viewer attempts to look. Blake Fall-Conroy’s Minimum Wage Machine uses digital and physical means to comment on labor and the generation of income, dispensed as pennies. Alicia Eggert’s clock-like work repeatedly forms the word “Now” in an impossible attempt to visualize the present moment. R. Luke Dubois’ Learning Machines are vintage voting machines augmented with digital technology to present an illusion of choice based on rules set up by the artist. These artists demonstrate that machines and technology do not always function as planned and may function mysteriously, or even counter to our input.