The Mechanical Blog

Tim Hunkin’s talk ‘Popular Art’ (11th April 6pm) will be the first in a series of talks at Kinetica to coincide with the CMT retrospective and Ride of Life exhibition which starts on Friday 6th April. Tim’s Chiropodist (1986), originally made for CMT in Covent Garden, will be treating visitors’ feet throughout the exhibition, which runs until 5th May 2007.

Other talks include Will Jackson, Paul Spooner, as well as an evening with Sue Jackson and Sarah Alexander looking back over the past 28 years of CMT.

We are thrilled to offer this new piece from Japanese automata maker, Kazu Harada, just in time for Valentines.
After studying Art History at university, Kazu worked mainly as a computer operator. He started making automata as a hobby in 2002 and came to England last September, as he says, ‘to meet great automata makers and develop my automata making skills’.

Kazu has been apprenticing with The Fourteen Balls Toy Company during his time as a student at Falmouth University.

As Kazu says,
‘My main intent is to make people chuckle with my automata
which are cute at a glance but somewhat weird’.

April 6th to May 5th 2007 - Kinetica, Old Spitalfields Market, London E1 6AA
This fascinating new exhibition will trace the story of Cabaret Mechanical Theatre from its birth in 1979 as ‘Cabaret’ - a crafts shop in Falmouth, Cornwall. Featuring over 80 pieces of automata from the past 28 years, as well as some new commissions.

The upper floor of Kinetica will be devoted to The Ride of Life, a major CMT project from 1989. Although most of the 25 life size automated scenes were completed by the artists, the Ride was never installed at its intended destination - Meadowhall Shopping Centre, in Sheffield.

This exhibition tells the story of the Ride, and will display the one remaining complete scene, - Ron Fuller’s Adam and Eve Pubic Bar, alongside parts from other scenes including Tim Hunkin’s ‘Living Room’ - where the Ride was to have started off with visitors seated on their travelling sofas, and Paul Spooner’s ‘Main Street UK’.
Talks and Screenings to be announced.

Come along and join us for some automata making workshops at Kinetica this weekend.

To book a place visit the Kinetica website.

We will be joined by Keith Good, author of Amazing Machines, and he will guide you through making your own automata from scrap materials to take home.

CMT’s Touring Exhibition ‘Mechanics Alive!!’ opens today at the Singapore Science Centre.
The exhibition is part of iFutures a celebration of new technologies in Singapore. CMT’s automata are used to introduce a pre-digital and artistic element to the exhibition. The official opening by the President of Singapore took place last night amid remote controlled kites, robot dancers and an indoor firework display.

The exhibition continues until March 2007, and there are a series of workshops planned using the Designing Automata Kit.

Tomorrow is the big launch of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Make sure to be at your computer at 4 pm GMT

(that’s 8 a.m in Los Angeles, 10 a.m. in Texas, and 9 a.m. in New York, and 8pm in Singapore…)

To Kinetica last night for the launch of their exhibition, Magnetic Visions. It was a delight to meet Bruce Shapiro whose latest work, part of the Sisyphus (IV) series, was the centre of attention.

These pieces are mesmerising to watch. A magnet traces complex, computer controlled paths beneath, while above, a steel ball in a field of sand creates dune patterns in its wake. As in the Greek myth from which it draws its name, Sisyphus rolls its “boulder” endlessly, only to witness the cyclic undoing of this labour.

Bruce is giving a talk on the Art of Motion Control this Saturday 25th November at 4 pm at Kinetica.

If you are in the USA check out Bruce’s Ribbon Dancer which has just been installed at the Science Center of Iowa.

Paul Spooner has just finished a great new piece called ‘The Life of Marat’, in which we find Marat sitting in his bath (fashioned from a piece of lead donated by a neighbour), turning the pages of ‘The People’s Friend’ - the cover of which has a rather gruesome picture of Charlotte Corday. On careful inspection the viewer will see that Spooner has also made the mirror image of Marat, his newspaper and the duck upside down in the bath.

Spooner’s inscription on the piece is as follows:-

‘ ‘Jean Paul Marat’ - Born in Switzerland, but thrown out for being spotty, is seen here taking a bath in Revolutionary France, he is reading an English version of his newspaper, “L’Ami du Peuple”.

Simon Schama has got wind of this and is putting on his own programme about the original painting of Marat in his bath by David in this week’s BBC2 programme, ‘The Power of Art’. (Friday 10th November - 7.30pm)

Avid automata collector and author of ‘Stormbreaker’ Anthony Horowitz is the delighted owner of Matt Smith’s 2004 piece, The Price of Chickens.

‘I bought this because it reminded me of two characters out of Foyle’s War (Horowitz’s TV series) - ‘they would certainly have plenty to talk about if they had a chicken in 1945! The mechanism is so ingenious and yet the two women are so recognizable…almost prosaic. I think it’s a great piece’.

The lady in blue (Maud) is talking to Flo (the other woman), Flo then pulls a chicken out of her basket (the chicken raises about 6cm and is hidden by the basket) then tells Maud the price, Maud stops talking and leans forward to take a closer look, at the same time she raises her hand to the side of her face (as elderly English ladies are prone to do, have a look around any supermarket!) the machine then resets.

Matt Smith has produced a brilliant series of automata exhibits for the newly opened Weston Park Museum in Sheffield. The pieces are part of the new ‘Life and Times‘ gallery and depict many of the past occupations in the local area. This is the clogger (a latter day shoemaker).

Matt’s long awaited new Fourteen Balls Design will be announced later this year as part of our ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ Virtual Exhibition.