About/Biography
Kal Spelletich
Born in Davenport, Iowa (named the worst city in America) (1960). He was raised in a right-wing Christian home and fled and was driven out when he was 15. He lived on the streets, squatted, in illegal warehouses, went to Art school, somehow got two degrees, and has worked at a myriad of jobs from Factories, Marijuana farming, Night attendant at a psych ward, Carpenter, Special effects for films, TV Personality, Dishwasher and College professor to name a few.
Where many artists outsource the fabrication of sculptures in industrial materials, Spelletich insists on fabricating, sourcing, wiring, programming and you name it, building the often extremely complex technologies of his work. It is often slow-going. But in year 42 much has been accomplished. “I have notebooks full of ideas”, he says, “Years of ideas, I make/create a piece and I think of 6 more.” The process is slow managing the machines himself without even the help of assistants. The work, these machines, and robots, are not for washing windows nor helping you do chores, they are for enlightenment, poetry, magic. “I enjoy misusing technology”, misapplying it, poetically using it”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal_Spelletich
He seems to not be of these times and yet his work is so very much of these times. He has been featured in SC-Fi books, films, and TV shows, volunteered with the notorious robotics collective, Survival Research Laboratories, and helped pioneer early Burning Man. All with minute remuneration. The conservative picture-based consumerist art world never really found his work marketable, thanks to Kal creating virtually non-consumable art pieces using robotics, fire, laser-based pieces, walking BB-Q’s, and a Robotic Orchestra to Installations. Despite all of this, he continues making. He is deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism. Odd I think, but not, like the monk on a hill, toiling regardless of the outcome.
Kal rattles of bon mots:
“A wise man once said….. nothing. If life gives you lemons, demand tequila and salt. There is nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule.”
He has been notoriously single his whole life but had a string of loves and lovers. He is a rascal and a provocateur. He, it seems, is tragically committed to living his values, and being authentic. His friends and loves got day jobs and health insurance and 401k’s, raised families. He wanted to make art, to play, to barely eat, to do shows and get paid so as to just barely make rent, and somehow stay out of jail. “To live as frugally as possible, to not find TO GOOD of a job, to not stray from my real work.” “Cutting corners and finding workarounds. And, smash capitalism once and for all. Once I realized I didn’t need to buy a bunch of crap, I was free.” “It’s not completely outside of the system, but mostly, this art-making thing” “I aspire to carry all matters to an extreme, as Keats says.”
“The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. Nor does my art have to make sense to you. You got to go on living, even if it kills you”, Kal emotes a radiant positivity and humor about life, art, and this labor of love despite his odd life. “What else was I going to do?” he asks. “We are mystics, rabble-rousers, mad scientists, alchemy masters, and we have fun doing it”.
Kal collaborates with a very long list of friends. He is a possessed gardener, having planted well over 100 plants around San Francisco, and has been involved in every protest movement since the Vietnam War. “My oldest sister, a civil rights attorney, surreptitiously took me to a “Nam demo when I was about 10 or 11 in 1970 or so, (our folks would have wanted her jailed for that) the date is fuzzy, the impact was huge”.
He has shown this artwork all over the world, but to little reward, very few sales in his 43 years of art making, indifferent to capital he goes on. And on.
“The reward is the journey, the travels, the process, the meeting of kindred souls all over the world. My brain trust. I love it. They are out there, you just have to find them. We are not alone. This work isn’t for the weak of heart nor soul. I pay for the majority of the making and travel. It is amazing what you can do when you don’t buy much of anything new and learn to recycle, repair, and go without. It opens up massive opportunities”. Kal concludes, “I only had one of two choices — work at a JOB and go crazy … or decide I was an artist, live in illegal workspaces and starve.“
“I have long ago decided to starve and yet I am fulfilled.”
– from an interview by Anselm Ruest
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Career Narrative
I am a visual artist who has been developing projects that directly connect people to hidden aspects of life using sensors and robotics since the early 1980’s. Working with interactive sculptures and live performances, my projects rely on viewers to take an active role to complete each work.
Projects primarily involve hand built robots, digital technology, sound, video, movement, and human physiology.They raise open ended questions about the dominant economic producers of technology, the interplay of technology and spirituality, the role of the collective in capitalism, and economic and educational privilege.
For 30 years I have been an artist and educator based in San Francisco, completing large scale, collaborative, local and international projects that question the values, roles, and norms inherent in how our culture develops, distributes, and uses technology.
Technology is the most important medium to be working in at this point in history. Technology is steering the planet and will either save us or destroy us. My work is generated from the belief that ultimately humanity prevails over technology.
My interactive sculptures are built from the same elements of technology, hardware and software, used in everyday consumer, industrial, and military devices and machines. Viewed from our contemporary vantage point that is immersed in functional technologies, my sculptures seem nonsensical. They are not meant for a proscribed use to achieve monetized goals. Technology’s previously intended use is subverted and the barrier of exclusive access is broken.
Brief Biography
For 38 years, Kal Spelletich has been exploring the interface of humans and robots, using technology to put people back in touch with real-life experiences. His work is interactive, requiring participants to enter or operate his pieces, often against their instincts of self-preservation. He probes the boundaries between fear, control and exhilaration by giving his audience the opportunity to operate and control fascinating and often dangerous machinery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal_Spelletich
Born and raised in Davenport, Iowa, the seventh of nine children. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of Iowa, and an M.F.A. from The University of Texas at Austin, both in the field of Media Art. He has performed, exhibited and lectured worldwide, collaborating with scientists, musicians, and politicians. Spelletich’s work has been included in numerous museum and gallery exhibitions over the past three decades, including the De Young Museum, SFMOMA, The Exploratorium Museum and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, S.F., Ca., California Folk Art Museum, L.A., Ca., Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, Ca., and Headlands Center for the Arts, Marin, Ca. He has exhibited internationally in Namibia, India, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Croatia, France, Czech Republic, Holland, England, Slovakia and Austria. Spelletich lives and works in San Francisco, California.
He has several upcoming exhibits and performances in San Francisco and Berlin, Germany. In 2019 his work will be shown in a solo museum exhibit at St. Mary’s University in Orinda, Ca., and a concurrent solo exhibit at the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, CA.
THE LONG VERSION:
Kal Spelletich
Career Narrative
I am a visual artist who has been developing socially engaged art projects that directly connect people to hidden aspects of life using sensors and robotics since the early 1980’s. Working with interactive sculptures and live performances, my projects rely on viewers to take an active role to complete each work. Projects primarily involve hand-built robots, digital technology, sound, video, movement, and human physiology. They raise open ended questions about the dominant economic producers of technology, the interplay of technology and spirituality, the role of the collective in capitalism, and economic and educational privilege.
For 29 years I have been an artist and educator based in San Francisco. I have completed large scale, collaborative, local and international projects that question the values, roles, and norms inherent in how our culture develops, distributes, and uses technology. Given its overarching impact on culture, technology is the most important medium to be working in at this point in history. It is steering the planet and will either save us or destroy us. My work is generated from the belief that humanity prevails over technology.
My interactive sculptures are built from the same elements of technology, hardware and software, used in everyday consumer, industrial, and military devices. Viewed from our contemporary mainstream vantage point, one immersed in applied, functional technologies, my sculptures seem nonsensical. While using some of the same elements, they are not produced for commercial use or to monetize solutions to practical problems of day to day life. They are optimistic alternatives that subvert technology’s intended functional use and break the barrier of exclusive access that promotes passive consumption.
Formative Years and Educational Influences
My commitment to questioning technology’s dominant paradigm is a direct product of my early life in 1960’s Rust Belt America. I was raised in the staunchly blue-collar American city of Davenport Iowa. I was immersed in a culture that was white, dominated by working class men, and fueled by racism, xenophobia, and factory jobs.
At age 15 I left home and dropped out of school. I was self-sufficient and lived in abandoned buildings and on the streets. At first scamming for food while making friends with other runaways and drug abusers. Over the next three years I supported myself as a dishwasher, cook, carpenter, auto mechanic, and stagehand. At 18 I completed the General Education Development test and applied for a United Auto Worker’s job in an International Harvester factory. I landed a spot on the graveyard shift operating heavy machinery to build tractors. It was dangerous work. I saved every dollar I could. I bought a 35mm camera and photographed my friends and life. I was intrigued that like the factory machines, a camera was a conduit for making. What struck a deeper cord was the realization that I could access this power to create on my own terms.
After a year, economic forces led the United Auto Workers Union to call a strike. I was issued a 2 x 4 when I joined the picket line. The effect of this collective fight for livelihood exposed the collapse of the American industrial economy. It amplified my search for self-direction.
The following year, in 1981, I hustled my way into the University of Iowa and covered tuition with my savings from the factory job. At the time this was the biggest step in my life. I loved self-directed learning. I was a 20-year-old freshman and through a class found out about Art for the first time. I realized it was the way to make what I dreamt. Soon after switching to the art program, I rented my own art studio and began to curate exhibits, host art parties and book punk bands. Formative classes included experimental performance, installation and video. I also got schooled by many spectacular gay and feminist teachers, opening my mind to alternatives to the factory line mentality. I graduated in 1984 with a B.F.A.
Graduate School
In 1986 I received a full, 3-year scholarship from the University of Texas, Austin, College of Fine Arts to pursue graduate studies in Media Arts. My focus was creating technologically advanced interactive, immersive, and political works. During my graduate studies I noticed people were becoming passive consumers of culture through television and movies. I saw how, through sculptures, I could turn this dynamic around and create ways for people to participate directly with art. I experimented with viewer engagement and breaking the barrier between audience and performer. I created a series of sculptures which volunteers activated or inhabited, and which were part of performances and installations.
Between 1987 and 1989, during my studies, I was awarded grants by the Jumpstart Theatre in San Antonio; The Dougherty Arts Center; New Forms Regional Initiative Grant; Mexi-Arte Museum; and Austin Media Arts (all in Austin) for public performances of my sculptures. I earned an M.F.A. in 1989.
Franklin Furnace Grant
In 1990 I was awarded a Franklin Furnace Fund grant to build robotic sculptures and organize a traveling performance that would cross the United States. This year-long event was the springboard for my artistic career. Additional exhibits awarded in 1991 where at WEBO Gallery, NY; and Spaces Gallery Cleveland, OH. Additional funding was awarded by Group Support Fund of New York. Through the success of these exhibits and the tour I gained access to European venues. In 1992 I brought my sculptures to art spaces in Germany, France, Holland, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Exhibiting in Europe tied me to a fruitful thread of artists and art spaces in a dialogue that continues to this day. Because of this exposure to a range of art spaces and cultures, I began to investigate our aesthetic and perceptual relationship to biological systems, human organs, sensors and artificial intelligence
The San Francisco Bay Area: collectives 1990 – 2001
In 1990 I settled in San Francisco. It was a time when art collectives that questioned social and technological barriers were forming. I recognized the power of socially engaged art to raise awareness and I was eager to engage with new genres of machine art and social practices. Interacting with society is how one foments change, be it on the front lines of a worker strike, a demonstration for social justice or within a conventional gallery setting. Since 1990 I have volunteered for Survival Research Laboratories (SRL). At the time, San Francisco was epicenter of a burgeoning movement, machine art, a creative practice that fuses kinetic technologies with artistic performance. SRL was the pioneer in this movement. With this group I learned to build and organize large scale performances.
Also in 1990, I began an ongoing collaboration with The Cacophony Society to devise urban scale spectacles and happenings, such as building absurd floats for parades, hosting banquets in abandoned buildings and impromptu formal dinner parties in old utility tunnels. I wrote about these exploits in Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society, Last Gasp, 2013.
Between 1995 and 2001 I exhibited sculptures and installations at Burning Man. I participated with the founders to define the conceptual underpinnings of the festival that intertwines interactivity, extreme technology, and spectacle with self-sufficiency.
During this period, I also exhibited my own work at contemporary art galleries including the Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco; ZEITGEIST Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana; and Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin, Germany.
1995 – 2012
In 1995 I rented an abandoned warehouse in the economically disadvantaged Bay View district of San Francisco and turned it into a studio. Until August 2018 I ran this space as a platform for arts advocacy: hosting events, fundraisers, providing low cost housing and art studios for award winning writers, designers, artists, dancers, filmmakers, entrepreneurs and guerrilla gardeners. I used my art studio for classes, helped colleagues fabricate their works and repaired everything from cars and bicycles to musical equipment.
In 2000 I received a second Franklin Furnace Fund Grant which I used to create a large-scale performance of robotic sculptures that filled a shipping container and with which I toured the United States and Europe (Amsterdam, Berlin, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria). At this juncture my work had advanced to using sensors and medical technology to turn on and off my robots. These sensors expanded the range of interactivity of my sculptures from individuals to a room full of people. The work explored the themes of audience participation, fear/play and social responsibility. As reviewed on PBS: “Spelletich’s work is a unique combination of high and low technologies, combining outmoded computer hardware from Silicon Valley with the metal detritus from abandoned factories at the fringes of the city.” Spark*, season 3, episode ‘Shaken and Stirred’, aired 2005.
Between 2000 and 2012 these works were exhibited in several venues in the San Francisco Bay area including a solo show Machines, Robots, Videos, at Jack Hanley Gallery. Group shows included Now is Now, Deitch Projects, New York City and a commissioned sculpture for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California. Other selected exhibits of this work include a solo show Interactive Machine Art at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, Media Lab, 2001; Flight Simulator, Kontejner, Zareb, Croatia, 2002; Columbia University, New York, 2003; and the Royal Academy of Art, Architecture Program, London, 2008.
In 2007 my sculptures were shown in a solo show Master, Mind, Machine at the Exploratorium Museum, San Francisco, California. Following this, from 2008-2010 I was a visiting artist at the Exploratorium Museum. I exhibited several sculptures and created a mind-reading robot available to visitors during that time. The Exploratorium’s approach to engaging the general public in scientific and natural phenomena via experimentation, hands-on tactile learning continues to have a profound impact on my approach to art making.
Long Term Projects and Exhibits 2013 – 2017
In 2013 a performance at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, California, Interactive Robots by Kal Spelletich highlighted several sculptures that actively interfaced humans and robots to set up situations that empowered viewers to engage real-life experiences through technology. In March of 2013 my video installation With Your Head In the Clouds was included in group show at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles. Contemplating an alternative to the busyness produced by ever more efficient digital devices, this installation projected videos of people daydreaming in front of cloud-filled blue skies on the ceiling. As viewer’s moved about the room they were projected onto the ceiling and into the videos.
Intention Machines, started in 2012 and completed in 2015, was a long-term project that featured a series of robotic sculptures outfitted with the clothes of people who have profoundly impacted my life and career. Each life size figure genuflected, prayed or whirled like dervishes in response to a viewer’s touch to their sensors. The exhibit also included photos, videos and small robotic “prayer wheels” and reliquaries. These were exhibited in a solo show at The Catherine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, California in 2015 and was reviewed in SFAQ: “By trying to reconcile the gap in intentional systems science with sculptures that challenge and upend the human intelligence and artificial intelligence divide, Spelletich looks to the messy realm of “intentional imperfection” to keep machines and humans, human.”– Natasha Boas, March 2015.
Individual sculptures from this series were also included in a group show, Rayguns, Robots & Drones: Technology’s Peril & Promise, at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Sun Valley, Idaho. In 2015 the New Museum, Los Gatos, California included Two Flying Machines and Hugging Robot, as part of Giants in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of Airships a group show.
In 2015 I was awarded grants from the Zellerbach Foundation and the San Francisco Arts Commission to create Split Brain Robotics, an interactive audience participatory performance installation with two large robots that extend from 8-16 feet tall, each identical, each controlled by the left and right-side brainwaves of audience participants. We harvested brain wave data from live audience volunteers. This live streaming brain data ran the two robots. Can the participants make the robots kiss? This created a type of human robot biofeedback, a robot brain ‘mind meld’ exploring the morals of technology. Each robot was equipped with a microphone amplifying the sounds of itself, a live video projection, lights, fog and sensors. These were exhibited in 2017 and in a performance with a public audience at The Lab in San Francisco, California. These sculptures were featured in a documentary by Discovery Channel aired in 2017.
Setting up situations with my robotic sculptures in conventional galleries and art spaces invites the general public to be the element that completes a sculpture. In this way I create playful challenges to the typical passive visual consumption of static art. In 2014 my work was selected by the Maeght Foundation of France to be in dialogue with kinetic work from 20th century masters such as Paul Bury, Kasmir Malevich and Alexander Calder for their opening show at the Jules Maeght Gallery, San Francisco, California. That same year at the Oakland Art Museum in Oakland, California, my photographic work was included in the group show Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California.
In the summer of 2016 I was awarded a one-month residency at the Maeght Foundation in St. Paul de Vence, France to research their collection of 20th century modern kinetic sculpture. I focused on the exterior sculptures of Naum Gabo, Jean Tinguely, Antoine Pevsner, Maholy-Nagy, Christo and Brancusi. I improvised sound machine sculptures situated in dialogue with their location, scale and materials. The sounds elicited from the site conditions – light, humidity, wind – as read by sensors were translated to sound by my machines.
Teaching & Lectures 2002 – current
I came from America’s rust belt, lived on the streets, joined the factory line and earned two university degrees. My choices and opportunities continue to have a profound impact on my views of educational and economic inequities in the United States and globally. I am committed to addressing these issues through my art practice and teaching. I have taught ‘art robotics’, ‘hacking’ and ‘survival with technology’ classes at universities continuously since 2002. Since 2008, I have taught at The San Francisco Art Institute.
Selected lectures from 2010 through 2018 include: Stanford University; Mills College, Oakland; and New York University. Lectures abroad during this time: Folkwang University in Essen, Germany; Technical University Dortmund, Germany; India Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai India; University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia; Universitat der Kunste, Berlin; and the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague.
Current
In addition to pursuing my own projects and running my arts advocacy space, my activities related to socially engaged art includes curation of a group shows. The most recent, ILLEGAL, November 2017, at The Luggage Store in San Francisco, California, provided exposure for artists who work within a system that requires them to find their own outlets of expressions that by necessity are opposed legal means.
In the summer of 2018 I was awarded a 12-week residency at Stochastic Labs in Berkeley California to begin work on Organs Sounds The Body sculpture series. This vital support allowed focused time, access to advanced materials and discussions with current leaders in science, engineering and the arts. I have completed the first sculpture, Lung Organ, at a higher level of technical dexterity and aesthetic nuance than previously possible.
I continue to explore contemporary issues of technology and the body through robotic sound performances and roundtable discussions. Pro Arts Gallery supported Do Androids Dream of Surplus Value? Robotic Labor Exploitation and the Falling Rate of Profit as part of their ‘Imagining Post-Capitalism Festival’, May 2018. Two performances of Group Play Machines at The Lab, San Francisco, California (November 2017 and March 2018) included a total of fifteen volunteers playing my original scores in front of audiences of over 400 people.
Upcoming exhibits
In the remaining months of 2018 I am scheduled to present and exhibit my current work including Group Play Machines and Lung Organ in a solo show at Internet Archive. and solo performance at the Goethe Institute, both in San Francisco. Lung Organ will be part of a group show with fellow 2018 residents at Stochastic Labs, Berkeley, California. In 2019 I have a solo museum exhibit at St. Mary’s College Museum of Art, Moraga, California and a concurrent solo show at Catherine Clark Gallery in San Francisco. For 2020 I have a solo show in the works for Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
As technology evolves and effects our lives, I continue to both honor and question it. I am finding ways to discern this important moment and develop the means to imagine alternative applications to art and technology. To this end, I am thrilled that I can create more sophisticated, innovative and challenging works.
The support of a Guggenheim Fellowship would expand the experimental approach in my practice, support more in-depth exploration of socially engaged ideas and allow access to advanced technology. I am thankful for the opportunities that I’ve already been given, and because of these I continue to share and be generous with my peers. As greater opportunities arrive I strive to create thought provoking, in-depth projects to challenge and engage the public.
Thank you for considering my work for the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.
Sincerely,
Kal Spelletich
Kal Spelletich's Art 
Kal Spelletich Artists Statement Jan. 22, 2009
The question to ask artists is NOT how you got here but how you sustain the making of art.
In this world full of lies, a false economy, a fake democracy, fake elections, heartbreaks, letdowns, life in a security state and endless wars. Making art has always given me a sense of having a voice. It fulfills something lacking in our world. At my darkest moments art is always there for me. I feel engaged with an audience and not completely powerless. I am in a dialogue with the planet. I am technically challenged beyond belief building robots as well as conceptually realizing them. It has kept me form going crazy, from going on a shooting rampage and from becoming a drunk or drug addict. Art is like the lover who has never left me, and always says yes.
What is going on right now on this planet? Technology is rocking it, and terrorizing us. It is saving lives through medical breakthroughs and easing our workloads. At the same time the war machine continues to slaughter with deft precision and ruthlessness. So, I work with technology. I am experimenting with live audiences, robotics, pyrotechnics fear and play.
We are also being terrorized by fear, a fear of everything. This year it is financial collapse, the last few years it was terrorists. Previously Communists, Black people, Native Americans, next, maybe Martians. So, I work with fear as a medium.
I build machines and robots that I allow my audience to operate. My art combines sculpture, computers, science, biofeedback, inventions and audience interaction. The collaborators are the audience. The work is inspired by political activism, volunteerism, getting involved. Man is not an island hence my work is not complete without some engagement. The participant is a part of the work, the subject matter and the content.
Designing and building robots is hard. Designing and building robots of things that have never been done before is harder. Designing and building robots of things that have never been done before with the financial and time constraints of an artist, is verging on the ridiculous. I am not trying to humble people who volunteer to operate my art, rather empower them by putting extreme technology in their hands. I am exploring how far people are prepared to submit to external forces and how far they can allow a machine to intrude on the body. I am interested in a hybrid human machine system, technological interfaces, out of body/split body experiences/phantom limbs, blurring the boundaries between man and machine and prostheticly augmenting the body. I have been experimenting with bio-morphic inputs to trigger my art (EKG’s, respiration, EEG’s, proximity, lie detectors, touch and sound). Hence humans power machines and thru feedback the machines power humans. My work attempts to challenge both the applications of technology and the boundaries between art the audience. It is not about machines replacing people, instead the machines facilitate the thing that only humans can do: feel.
and marjorie cameron
Artists Statement/Image Identification list for: Kalman Spelletich #1. A hand cranked exercise machine that powers 8 different machines, robots and a turntable that plays Herb Alpert. The collaboration with the audience completes the work. This work is inspired by political activism, volunteerism and getting people involved in life. The participant is a part of the work, the subject matter and the content.
#2. Volunteer wears backpack, sensor laden gloves trigger robot, it responds to signals sent though gloves by moving arms. EKG in gloves picks up heartbeat and activates tail and spine. Tilt sensors control upper arms. This creates a feedback loop between participant and machine. Technology is the overriding medium ruling the planet and, terrorizing us. It is saving lives, easing workloads and slaughtering with deft precision and ruthlessness. So, I work with this dominant medium, technology.
#3. Electroencephalogram volunteer wears on head causes robot to react to your thoughts, emotions and intellect triggering 10 degrees of movement on robot. Can your mind control the robot or does the robot control your mind and body? Within this hybrid arrangement, assumed boundaries between art and audience, sentient and non-sentient are questioned.
#4. 7 foot Tentacle’s “head” has a video camera, monitor, light and valve with brethalyzer for dispensing wine. Glove with flex sensors controls the tentacle movements. Inspired by the serpent in the Garden of Eden tempting all whom operate it.
#5. Robotic self-portrait. Camera in mouth, 2nd overhead camera observes both the Spelletich-golem and viewer. Video is shown on two monitors at the end of room with a voodoo doll audience can manipulate causing the golem to move. Puppet-master or dictator? Parasitic or symbiotic? With no visible intelligence at work, is the golem merely entertaining? When the method of control becomes known, the golem becomes something to relate to, subjected to, act in opposition to, and play with.
#6. Gallery Installation with flying machines, telepresence, sensors and video. Machines respond to audience, climbing and punching through walls. Inspired by transcendence, Yves Klein’s leap into the void, Chagall’s flying people, Gordon Matta Clark, Sisyphus, stalking, surveillance, escape, breaking through and out of traps.
#7. Gallery Installation Installation exploring flight and the universal aspiration to fly. The desire to elevate oneself above one’s environment–to conquer the ocean of air.
#8. Machine you get in and on and ride using 2 joysticks to spin you left – right, up – down, tilt forward – back. Wind blows in your face & fire blasts overhead. Built just after 9/11, AND inspired by bucking bronco machines. I am seeking an empowered participant who shows me how far they will allow a machine to intrude upon their body.
#9. Spinning machine surrounds volunteer in a tornado of fire. Challenging the applications of technology and the boundaries between art, the audience, fear and play. Facing your mortality, fear and, finding something inside you, you didn’t know you had and coming out stronger. It is not about machines replacing people, instead the machines facilitate the thing that only humans can do: feel.
#10. Paper money is the negotiating for and with the flesh of trees. In Chinese theory, the wood element is considered the foundation of the living world, the earth itself is held together by their entwined roots. And what has become of the forest?
I integrate computers, science, robotics and biofeedback. My collaborators are the audience, the work does not exist without them. Inspirations: political activism, hybrid human machine systems, blurring the boundaries between man and machine and prostheticly augmenting the body. I attempt to challenge the applications of technology and the boundaries between art and audience. It is not about machines replacing people, instead the machines facilitate the thing that only humans can do: feel.
The dominant medium in the 21st century is technology. Technology is the overriding medium ruling, healing and terrorizing us. It is saving lives, eases workloads and slaughters with deft precision and ruthlessness. Fear is also a source of terrorization. Terrorized by a fear of everything. This year it is financial collapse. The last few years it was terrorists. Previously Communists, Black people, Native Americans, next, maybe Martians. So, I also work with fear as a medium.
I am currently exploring the issue of environmental dystopia also using photography and video. I am creating radical nature melding nature and technology as an aberration celebrating and warning about the loss of species and our environment.
I build machines and robots for my audience to operate. This interactive work is inspired by political activism, volunteerism and getting people involved in life. The collaboration with the audience completes the work. Man is not an island hence my work is not complete without some participation.The participant is a part of the work, the subject matter and the content. I experiment with creating a feedback loop between participant and machine. This work questions the role technology plays in our lives. How far people are prepared to submit to external forces and how far they can allow a machine to intrude on the body.
My work attempts to challenge the applications of technology, the boundaries between art, the audience, fear and play. Within this hybrid arrangement, assumed boundaries between art and audience, sentient and non-sentient are questioned. It is not about machines replacing people, instead the machines facilitate the thing that only humans can do: feel.
Can your mind control the robot or does the robot control your mind and body? I am seeking an empowered participant who shows me how far they will allow a machine to intrude upon their body.
A hybrid human machine system of technological interfaces, out of body/split body experiences/phantom limbs, man and machine and prostheticly augmenting the body. I experiment with bio-morphic inputs to trigger my art, humans power machines and thru feedback the machines power humans.
I build machines and robots for my audience to operate. My work combines sculpture, computers, science, and inventions. The collaboration with the audience completes the work. I experiment with biomorphic inputs (EEGs, EKGs, respiration, and proximity lie detectors) to trigger activity and create a feedback loop between participant and machine. I seek an empowered participant who shows me how far they will allow a machine to intrude upon their body. Within this hybrid arrangement, assumed boundaries between art and audience, sentient and non-sentient are questioned. Who and what are doing the feeling becomes less certain.
Well, this is one of the purposes of art itself. Science tries to understand nature in a logical sense, but there are many, many natural phenomena that cannot be explained by logic and science.
Historically, religion served this purpose. But now, we are getting into the 21st century and the power of religion is fading. People still need another way to understand the world besides logic — and we’re turning to art and spirituality to help us understand our environment and the world.
Artsists statement March 2011
Research is am integral part of my art. My practice is informed by expermenting with engineering and technology. Working from San Francisco since 1990 I have a group of collaborator/friends who are scientists, engineers, artists, construction workers and Silicon Valley X-pats. I make my machines and robots with no blue prints, designs or computer modelling. These works challenge phenomenologicaly those who activate and interact with them by challenging their perceptions about the role of technology, its roles in their lives and, what is fear and play.
Kal Spelletich hopes to speak about truth and power to those who will deal with his work.
sometimes on Sunday mornings i like to peruse Artstuff, let my mind wander from the state of reality and let it go entirely into imagination and inspiration. this morning i spent some of that time looking through your adventures, creations, words and photos and wanted to tell you that you added to my day! love your artists statement and the way that you seemingly hold true to your beliefs through your work; in an age of fear, using fear as a medium. hadn’t thought of fire and dynamite quite like that before. looking forward to following the world of Kal Spelletich.
Thank you Deborah!