This is the blog of Kal Spelletich. CONTACT: Spellkal (at) gmail.com + Art, technology, humans and robots, and, well, the journey http://www.kaltek.org/
PRESS/MEDIA/TALKS/VIDEO
Displays include post-industrial, post-nature hybrids. photo by Walter Novak
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„Kal Spelletich ist ein anarchistischer Aktivist und Witzbold. Er ist ein technologischer Visionär, Fabrikarbeiter, Gewerkschaftsorganisator, Pädagoge, Guerilla-Gärtner, hat auf der ganzen Welt ausgestellt: von Afrika bis Indien und überall dazwischen, kam aus dem amerikanischen Rostgürtel, lebte auf der Straße, gaunerte und dealte, ging in die Fabrik und erwarb zwei Universitätsabschlüsse, arbeitete mit Leuten wie den Butthole Surfers und der NASA zusammen, wirkte mit in Spielfilmen und im Fernsehen und ist ein preisgekrönter verrückter Wissenschaftler.”
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“Kal Spelletich is an anarchist activist and prankster. He is a technological visionary, factory worker, union organizer, educator, guerrilla gardener, has exhibited all over the world: from Africa to India and everywhere in between, came from the American Rust Belt, lived on the streets, hustled and dealt, went to the factory and earned two college degrees, worked with the likes of the Butthole Surfers and NASA, appeared in feature films and television, and is an award-winning mad scientist.”
Deep in his Mission studio, Spelletich says, “Here we have 3 stones vibrating. At different speeds, tempos, and with different masses.”I slowly turn on and off the stones, they shake, literally hum, vibrate. I tell him, of course, you live on a fault line, he slyly smiles.
These sonified stones make up a trio. Every surface of his workshop is covered with contraptions, gadgets, robots. Some in the works, many “finished”. Micro-controllers, sensors, and motors turn on and off a myriad of linkages and objects. Dark paintings by robot made while mourning the Ukraine war, a literal orchestra of sound machines, other contraptions to listen to the sun, moon and fog even.
Spelletich uses locally sourced Bay Area geology. “I found these stones on Thornton State Beach, Daly City. Foggy and windswept, on the fault line, they are, literally, tumbling into the sea.”“The story of nature’s elusive phenomena, one that stretches millennia, geologic processes and time” he says.
Sonification I think. Then, ahh, Rock Band!A three-piece, a trio. ala The Jam, Husker Du, The Ahmad Jamal Trio. He thinks he is clever. Well, maybe he is… I can play the stones for hours. They are mesmerizing. He lets me go and he wanders off, tinkering on something. I speed up and down the motors attached to the stones. I am jamming with the earth. It can get offensively loud, ambient, peacefully low, and pleasant. Like heartbeats.Intoxicating. Deep, primal. I speed one up and the other stone and then another start humming in cadence, in step if you will. I lose the track of time, 3 minutes? 6 minutes? I don’t know.
Kal muses on “The geological features of our planetary body. I Study and experiment with the Earth using technology”. “To reference Geological Time, we look at how the earth was and is formed, its structure, composition, the types of processes acting on it.
He shows me a hand-scribbled notebook passages,
Diagenesis Earthquakes erosion glaciation hydrothermal processes isostasy land subsidence liquefaction metamorphism sediment transport sedimentation tectonic processes volcanic activity Earth tides deformation soil formation magnetic storms mass wasting. Pages and pages of notes and drawings, plans and indecipherable scribbles.
“I am working on and in conjunction with these.”Where I ask? “Here in the studio, in my garden, soon out in an actual landscape. “Soon”, he muses.
A studio visit by: Filippo Fortunato
27 June, 2023
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I was interviewed in Berlin by the amazing Chris Keller in the summer of 2022 about life, work, play and the reasons we do all of this joyfulness…….
Kal Spelletich is an American contemporary artist. He’s a pioneer in the San Francisco mechanical art scene, building complex machines and robots by hand. By collaborating with spectators who voluntarily steer or operate his sculptures, Spelletich’s work explores the intersection between robots and humans. Early work often included fire and “extremely dangerous” situations to examine the limits of fear, control and noise. In the late 1990s, Spelletich began incorporating sensors into his sculptures to address questions about technology, spirituality, and play.
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Der Plattenladen am Rande der Stadt mit einer Spezialausgabe. Wir haben den Sendeplatz für unseren langjährigen Freund, Wegbegleiter und Unterstützer Chris Keller (@general_elektrick) freigeräumt. Chris hat sich im Spätsommer mit dem Künstler Kal Spelletich zu einem Gespräch getroffen. Zwei Hinweise vorab: 1. Das Gespräch ist auf Englisch. 2. Noise…
Kal Spelletich ist ein amerikanischer zeitgenössischer Künstler. Er ist ein Pionier der Maschinenkunstszene in San Francisco und baut komplexe Maschinen und Roboter von Hand. Durch die Zusammenarbeit mit Zuschauern, die seine Skulpturen freiwillig steuern oder bedienen, erforscht Spelletichs Arbeit die Schnittstelle zwischen Robotern und Menschen. Frühe Arbeiten beinhalteten häufig Feuer und »extrem gefährliche« Situationen, um die Grenzen von Angst, Kontrolle und Rausch zu untersuchen. In den späten 1990er Jahren begann Spelletich, Sensoren in seine Skulpturen einzubauen, um sich mit Fragen zu Technologie, Spiritualität und Spiel auseinanderzusetzen. @kalspelletich @musuku.berlin
Stroje bez příčiny, MeetFactory, otevřeno denně 15—20, výstava potrvá do 15. 4. 2011. MEET Factory Press 2011
Kal Spelletich created his art objects directly in the MeetFactory space, from the materials found there and on the streets of Prague city, where he was on residency for well over 3 months. There are drawings. Then some video beamed tall LIVE of the flying tree in back rear room! Oddlike objects with ancient historicals displayed like Jewels. A tree root heart spinning very fast and loudly dashes paint in mess very large and huge all over wall and floor. A joyous green spray by tree painting the gallery. The fantastic sculptures Flying through the Stables or Forest Aviation consist of forest trees moved by brilliantly connected electrical connections, and their unkemptness has a haunting effect. Trees with flamethrowers defending itself well. The elagentness brutality of Spelletich’s sculptures communicates perfectly.
He has made a set of interactive objects. Without visitors, most installations don’t work, and moving into the monstrous sculptures only requires pressing the right button or activating on the sensor that knows one is there. Insurmountable curiosity and desire to find out how things work becomes the driving force behind the entire project. Science, nature, engineering, play, survivals, flights and robots making the art are the things on his mind. After a week of the exhibition being open, some objects no longer function as they should not and just as should be. The art has shortened life by it’s very use, as we are warned at doorway entrance (as we are daily). Nevertheless, this fascinating and quirky “tech museum” is undoubtedly an event worth experiencing.
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The PBS treatment
1,005 viewsSep 21, 2010
Go to the brink of sheer panic with Kal Spelletich’s fire-breathing works of post-industrial folk art. Original air date: January 2005.
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LAURENCE FERLINGHETTI’S BERET MECHANIZED BY 3 MOTORS AND 4 SENSORS
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Video Documentation of my Machine Philharmonic performed at The Lab in San Francisco.
This is my Machine Philharmonic, an interactive robotic quintet and site specific installation. I do performances with audiences running the machines. The scores the volunteers follow are projected videos. The volunteers follow certain actions in the videos. For instance, waves, pedestrians or birds in flight. The position of each item in the video will define when each robot is activated. For instance, when seagulls are in the bottom of the video bass and drum machines, the middle equates mid-range machines, the top of the video image, strings and high notes. Often all ranges will have seagulls so all robotic instruments will be played. There is also a video projection of the machines shot up close by me as I mix the sounds. It can also be run around-the-clock as a site specific installation.
It is a lot of fun and hearkens back to my old noise band days in the 1980’s. I shot the scores in Paris, San Francisco, Norcal and Madrid. I am continually shooting new scores/videos.
A talk I was involved in for the release of a catalogue on my solo exhibit on for and about Praying Robots.
The conversation included Peter Maravelis, Catharine Clark, Tanya Zimbardo and 4 Valise sound Machines! The Photo was strangely added from and exhibit in NYC from 13 years ago……
Here is a short excerpt from the article on moi by the incredible Virgillia D’Andrea. Virgillia has written a 12 page! essay on my life and work. They are truly a character, unique on their anarchistic views and culture. (click the link below it).
Bias is part of the current art dialogue against the glory of the hands, of the hands. Any action that goes beyond the gesture, and especially the handmade, is thrown as anti-intellectual. “Creation” is the keyword in a system that has started to devalue objects created by an artist. The liberation of skills, crafts and the artist’s object was first occupied by the 20th century. This is evidenced by Joesph Bueys and even Kal collaborators Alicia McCarthy, folk artists, Alexander Hacke and Danielle DePicciotto, Chris, Nelson Loskamp and several artist groups that pull out and away from text theory as an art product.
Quotes on and about kal Spelletich:
“It is obvious Spelletich’s robots exist to bring capitalism to it’s knees.”
-Virgilia D’Andrea
“We have run in fear from the San Francisco mad-scientist’s widely acclaimed fire-ensconcing robotic art, which brought us too close to the dystopian realities of our real world–where art and life collide in anxiety-provoking, sensory rabbit-holes in which technology and terror machines run amok.” -Natasha Boas
“When Spelletich, oh so generously allows one to operate one of his pieces, he shifts the focus from the creator to his audience, making you the star. Who does that? Ever?”
-Austin Chronicle
“His work is beautifully subversive, Tesla meets Leonardo meets a mad scientist, subverting the corporate roles bestowed upon technology.” -Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
“Kal Spelletich’s mechanical theater reflects an age in which the border between utopia and dystopia is increasingly blurred, and makes us wonder whether that border ever existed and, ultimately, whether human civilization ever planned for one.” – Piero Scaruffi
I love the colors in the spin which lies at the heart of earth matters. Authentic and natural. I am so happy that you are spinning within the world. -Kay Miller
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Interview with artist Kal Spelletich, part of the More Than 700 Years Faculty Exhibition on view at Fort Mason and 800 Chestnut Campus of the San Francisco Art Institute
Kal Spelletich
ONE OF 28 ARTISTS INCLUDED IN THE EXHIBITION MORE THAN 700 YEARS, FRIDAY, JUN 7, 2019 – SUNDAY, SEP 1, 2019,
At the latest exhibit at the Museum of Art in Saint Mary’s College, not only is touching the art encouraged, it is required to fully experience each piece. `’Significance Machines and Purposeful Robots” is an exhibit of works by Kal Spelletich, a San Francisco-based artist who utilizes robotics and reclaimed materials to create sculptures that move when you touch them.
Why do you create? Machine artist Kal Spelletich speaks to his process and interactive robots. “Significance Machines and Purposeful Robots” is on display from July 25 through December 8, 2019. Reception on Thursday, September 5, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. An artist dialogue will be on October 10. For more information visit: http://www.stmarys-ca.edu/museum.
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Dear Kal,
Greetings. I hope you are well.
I am writing to inform you of the long-awaited publication of my book, WHAT’s NEXT? Eco Materialism & Contemporary Art. The book will officially launch later this week. Can you please send me your mailing address? I am happy to send you a complimentary copy to express my appreciation for your cooperation.
I hope you will help promote this innovative text to your colleagues and acquaintances. You might tell them that, in addition to assembling remarkable artists like yourself, Eco Materialism introduces a timely new cultural/philosophical context for this work. Furthermore, the book is distinguished by the publisher’s willingness to digress from conventional publishing protocols in order to adopt ‘eco materialist’ principles in its manufacture and distribution:
– All paper copies are print-on-demand in order to avoid transportation costs and waste.
– The book is also available as an e-book.
– Readers can either purchase the entire book or they can select individual chapters. This is both expedient and resourceful.
– PDFs of the book are available to colleges for printing on campus. This eliminates all transportation costs – financial and environmental.
Another pending development is the inclusion of this book on my website: www.lindaweintraub.com
Your comments are welcome. I look forward to staying in touch with you.
Linda Weintraub
In this highly original book, Linda Weintraub surveys the work of 40 international artists who present materiality as a strategy to convert society’s environmental neglect into responsible stewardship. These bold art initiatives, enriched by their associations with philosophy, ecology and cultural critique, bear the hallmark of a significant new art movement. This accessible text, augmented with visuals, charts and questionnaires, invites students and a wider readership to engage in this timely arena of contemporary art.
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Discovery Channel Television Program on Split Brain Robotics. This robotics piece is by Kal Spelletich and Mitch Altman with support by The San Francsico Arts Commission and The Zellerbach Foundation. Where the audience operates two hand built giant mind reading robots that can read each side of your brains thoughts.
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What is your life purpose?
Why are you on the planet?
What is your life’s work?
A short Doc on me.
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Press on Split Brain Robotics Performance with Mind Reading Robots
What future for the labor theory of value in a world that expels human workers from production and is rapidly becoming more habitable for machines than people?
Since this is Burning Man HATE WEEK. I often hang my head in shame that i helped start this and it turned into an Xtreme Yuppie Tourism destination. Festival culture.
It started out SO fun, and the unknowns were exciting. It felt like we were setting the stage for a new way to present ideas and art…then…..the ravers and masses of tourists came and it all got watered down.
I just remembered this long lost documentary by PBS I was featured in called the Promise of play from 1999 I believe. It is a 12 part series. It features wonderful elderly women playing bridge, professional football players, children, pro wrestlers, even Jane Goodall and her chimps and ahhh, me!
My clip starts at 2:43, then at 9:28 & 10:46. A bunch of the old gang is in it as well, many of you will recognize some great old souls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2HLVvss_Rs
Lives of the Most Excellent Artists, Curators, Architects, Critics and more, like Vasari’s book updated. The Art World Demystified, Hosted by Brainard Carey.
Bay Area roboticist Kal Spelletich marvels at the eagerness with which his audience members subject themselves to his unintuitive and often dangerous interactive automata. Convinced that present technology has fostered a passive and risk-free mode of existence in modern America, Spelletich subverts the alienating properties of machinery by transforming materials into kinetic experiences that draw attention to human faculties like eroticism, spirituality, and fear. Despite his remarkable feats of engineering, Spelletich is often absent from his exhibitions, placing higher importance on the network of like-minded contributors and viewers than his reputation as artist.
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PROPANE RAIN
An award winning documentary on Kal Spelletich and some of his collaborators. Made in 2002. Thanks Geekboy, EB, Jay Broemmel, John Law and so many more.
Golden Gate Award Nomination, San Francisco International Film Festival, 2003
Honorable Mention, Marin County Film Festival, 2002
Perth International Film Festival, 2002
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Technology and Consciousness: Artificial Intelligence and Art
A conversation with Jerry Kaplan and Kal Spelletich
Artificial Intelligence is poised to transform today’s society as completely as the Internet did 20 years ago. The impact of both on all aspects of life, work, art, relationships, humanity, and consciousness, is as yet unknown-but not for long.
An Evening with Kal Spelletich
By Ashley Hong, a Catharine Clark Gallery
August 15, 2014
There is something surreal about the animation of inanimate objects.
Maybe it’s the idea of metal breathing fire or machines that can mimic
sacred human actions, like praying and hugging, that creates a
transcendental impression. In the modern world, technology is
ubiquitous. As technology becomes increasingly more advanced, it
consumes more and more of our time. Kal Spelletich, a San Francisco
artist, builds robots and machines that question the role technology
plays in our lives. He asks questions that challenge our perception of
science and technology, such as, “How can we have fun with some
seemingly sinister technological applications?” and “Can we mechanize
spirituality?” To Spelletich, machine robots “inhabit an innersticial
place where they are both beyond human and robots at the same time.
This leaves the audience mildly suspicious of the machine world and
“reality;” it messes with people’s perceptions of safety and the role
of technology.”
Kal Spelletich was born and raised in Davenport, Iowa. He ran away
from home at age 15, and worked numerous jobs as a carpenter, plumber,
teacher, and auto mechanic among many others. Art was never on his
radar as a child, but during college, interaction with a camera
sparked an interest. While at the University of Iowa and later at the
University of Texas at Austin for his Masters, art became a lifestyle
for Spelletich. As a mechanic and carpenter, Spelletich was naturally
drawn to sculpture, robots, and machinery. He wanted to make “art that
does things,” so an essential tool in his studio is a cordless drill.
Spelletich says he “scavenges junkyards, the streets, and Ebay,” and
people give him materials for his work. “I cannibalize old pieces, I
really try and not buy stuff, [and to] not add to consumerism.
Honor[ing] items already used, I often feel a used item holds
memories/energy from its previous user, previous actions.” To
Spelletich, every cast off has potential.
His studio can be described as an organized mess. Despite being filled
with wood and metal scraps and other industrial materials he finds
along the way, the warehouse in which he creates his magic has an
unconventional feeling of comfort and familiarity. Just as we build
our lives with pieces we find here and there, Kal brings to life what
others would quickly toss into the trash, “The roles of humans are
changing just as tech and robots roles are changing, humans are good
at a lot of things. But that is changing. Robots are good at a lot of
things. But that is changing. I like how the two things are flipping.
With every technological change there is a trade-off.” Spelletich’s
love for trees and wood is expressed through the small oasis of green
outside his warehouse in an otherwise industrial neighborhood. This
balance between wood and metal is beautiful. There is a compelling
tension between the many opposites that make up his world. Metal can
withstand fire, but wood cannot; and wood represents the very organic
essence of life. Wood is usually needed to spark a fire and yet when
it burns, it turns back into earth. All of Kal’s fire pieces are made
of metal and by working with both metal and wood, Spelletich explores
how seemingly materials are intertwined.
Spelletich’s Fireshower is one of his most known works. It is
essentially a capsule that surrounds a person in fire. To Spelletich,
fire is “like a wild animal,” and having the flames merely five inches
from your skin creates a feeling of “terror then bliss.” “I am often
exploring how much a person is prepared to submit to external forces
and how far s/he can allow a machine to intrude on the body. I like
the double edged sword of this medium, you are attracted to it yet
scared…” Spelletich’s multitude of fire pieces symbolizes his own
experiences with mortality and the process of coping and finding peace
after death. It was after dealing with the passing of close family
members and seeing important people leave his life that Spelletich
really began to grasp the ideas of abstract art. He found a new
appreciation and understanding of abstract art and began creating
abstractions that gave him a way to cope with pain and sadness. Here
his love of Eastern religions, particularly the idea of Zen,
transformed itself into robotic sculptures.
In an exhibition at Catharine Clark Gallery in conjunction with ZERO1
Biennial in 2015, Spelletich further delves into the ideas of what
truly makes us human. He asks whether we can mechanize spirituality,
“Can praying be automated? Buddhists do this! If we do not pray can a
robot do it for us?” With these questions in mind, Spelletich began
creating what he calls “Praying Robots.” He aims to bring into the
forefront of people’s minds the possibility that intangibles such as
emotions, the soul, and spirits, might be measurable. “Can I build an
interface to trigger robots that can read viewers’ “auras, vibe or
character”? Can a robot respond to one’s individuality? Is
spirituality quantifiable? Can one crowd-source energy to trigger the
robots? Why is an atheist interested in this? Can I scientifically
conduct experiments on whether this works?” These kind of questions
spark the creative genius of Kal Spelletich and further explore the
proximity of art and science.
In such a high tech, fast-paced society, we need constant reminders to
take a step back from our phones, tablets, and laptops and realize the
things that are constantly changing around us. Does being consumed by
technology help us as a human race? Or is technology taking away parts
of what makes us human, like physical interactions, reactions to
people, and emotions? Many of Spelletich’s works aim to bridge human
interaction with the art pieces themselves. Controlled simply by
hovering a hand over a piece of metal to move the sculpture, many of
his works require audience engagement. He even has a hugging machine
that grabs a person from behind and lifts them into a huge bear hug.
This is another example of technology and machines doing very
human-like things, and it makes one wonder just how much a machine
will be able to do in the future. Spelletich’s interest in the ideas
of religion and spirituality makes him question whether art and
technology can provide a substitute for religion. His Praying Hands
are human operated machines that essentially pray to the person that
is controlling it. Spelletich creates a beautiful connection between
human and machine, demonstrating how each relies on the other to
function.
Kal Spelletich’s renowned art pieces have lead him all over the world,
from Europe to Africa to India. Every culture has an influence on an
artist’s perspective and every culture interacts and reacts
differently to the same artworks. Spelletich has noticed that “every
exhibit is an experiment in engaging the audience and learning. To
bring work that appears to be from another world, into another world
is eye opening for me. In essence, I am interested in conducting live
experiments on audience members using technology.” Audience engagement
is at the heart of Kal Spelletich’s work and as he continues to
explore ideas that extend our boundaries of thought, he creates works
that changes the way we think and interact with art.
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The Artist as Change Agent:
Kal Spelletich’s Transformative Art and Performances
by Tanya Augsburg
Artist Kal Spelletich has no use for passive consumerism and inaction. With a longstanding interest in Zen philosophy and an enduring commitment to activism, Spelletich’s life has been staunchly anti-consumerist in his pursuit of making art out of recycled, freecyled, donated, stealthily procured, and otherwise “opportuned” materials scavenged from Bay area junkyards and dumpsters. While Spelletich is known primarily as a kinetic machine and robotic artist who works with fire, his conceptual and affective art work has always been much more expansive, including performance, multimedia installation, interactive participatory social practice, and more recently, abstract geometric kinetic constructions.
A Brilliant book i am in from the Arts Organization, KONTEJNER
Curatorial Perspectives on the Body, Science and Technology by: IvanaBago, Olga Majcen Linn, Suncica Ostoic with thanks to Will Linn. http://www.kontejner.org/
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 are willing to interact and play with technology. My work attempts to challenge and subvert the applications of technology, the boundaries between art, the audience, fear and play.
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Something I wrote a few years back for Zing Magazine:
http://www.zingmagazine.com/issue21/johanson.htmlLIFE IS THIRSTA few statements and rambling observationsBy Kal SpelletichAll glory comes from daring to begin.–Eugene F Ware Art, it is about collaborating, be it with a friend, a gallery owner, a television crew, your neighbours, or a stranger. When I am asked to exhibit my work I think, I am blessed. Each show is a gift, a miracle. It is about giving back, and sharing. It is life and death. Just like my day-to-day life. Junky friends OD’ing. Friends dying of very simple medical conditions. Drugs in the arts community are like a plague, like AIDS. We sacrifice ourselves for something bigger; the suffering necessitates the creating. In the end, it is supposed to be hard. You make and make and hope you can inspire your audience, to be a catalyst, and send someone on their journey. Not your journey, theirs! Why are you on the planet? Why am I? To help others find their purpose–probably the most important thing for us to do. Artists generally don’t have much money, but they are wealthy. They have soul, heart, passion; they follow their muse–something people who only follow money do not follow and will never understand. So we are wealthy! Money can be a good thing, but you have to waste a lot of time making it. This life, it is amazing, confounding and transcendent. I’m writing this in a field full of stones from an ancient lava flow in Namibia, Africa, May 9, 2006. I never dreamed my art would take me to such spectacular, transcendent places, where I meet such astounding people. These are the rewards. Another reward has been teaching. It keeps me a perpetual student. To stay in touch with different generations, to help people get where they need to go, and not whitewash it with bullshit and lies. I am always impressed by artists, that they have the balls, the guts, to make something, to even attempt to create and add to our language, to make something out of nothing, to face demons, to contribute, to give back, to enter into a dialogue with humanity. The real glory is to begin. Then, to exhibit, to present new ideas. The secret of success is constancy of purpose. Our stories, written words, songs, pictures: we repeat them through the millennia, sharing what bits and pieces we glean, looking for poetic moments. Out there, we look for that DEEP thing that isn’t visible in day-to-day life: an undercurrent, another dimension you know is there, a source for real knowledge, and the quest for a connection with that. As artists, the more you take in the more you are able to give back. The longer you stay in it the richer your oeuvre. ART CAN: Change your destiny Find your soulmate Find your fortune Stop injustice Remove tyrannical governments Help you realize yourself “They” can censor us. “They” can CUT US OFF, but that will never stop creativity. Sometimes the land has to burn in order to regenerate. Art is so much like science: The Philosophy of Science can be divided into two areas. The first: the process of scientific research and discovery. The second: the fruits of that process, the things we discover, the insights we gain. #1. We are concerned with the proper procedure for acquiring knowledge that can justifiably be called “scientific.” #2. We are concerned with the ultimate use and purpose of that which is discovered. #3. It is metaphysical: the study of any question that cannot be answered by scientific observation and experimentation. Artists add even more to the mix.There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them, experimentation verifies the result of that combination.–Dennis Diderot PEOPLE WANT TO BE TESTED. They test themselves. They go out looking for challenges. How can the mind transcend the limits of the body? By addressing its fears. Fear–not baseball–is the great American pastime. Politicians use it masterfully to manipulate the people. I use fear as a medium. I am interested in empowering people with it, not humbling them. It is one of these inexplicable paradoxes that we pay good money to rid ourselves of our fears, when we should be inspiring people to face the limits of what they are capable of dealing with, to experiment with the body’s limitations as well as the mind’s. Each piece I make, I make it like it is the last piece I am going to make. My final statement. ONE THING TRULY EXPERIENCED IS WORTH IT ALL. WE ALL WANT TO EXPERIENCE WHAT WILL RESONATE WITHIN OUR SOULS. Keeping a workspace has always been paramount to my art making. I have lived and worked in numerous squats, and illegal warehouse studios. Living in my studio was and is the only way to swing the bills. My current studio has existed for 16 years. Hundreds of people, if not thousands, have worked there. We have squat gardens on abandoned derelict lots, neighbourhood events, endless BBQs, classes, shows, exhibits, political events, on and on. Having a play space, party room, a sacred zone where I can escape and focus, overrides all comforts. I have always booked my own shows, trying not to count on the galleries or museums for validation or income. Having a studio space has helped infinitely. Art is like voting: “good” art creates discussion, “bad” art creates no discussion. Either way, you are at least voicing an opinion, like voting. If you don’t try, nothing will happen. I have always thought the original artists, after children, are native Shamans. They worked with and for their community. For art to go anywhere, it needs to go beyond the white box, reach past the tyranny of capitalism, products, production, consumption, consumerism, and business models. I doubt any Shaman envisioned their work in such a format of with these constraints. Nothing works in isolation. If everything is dynamically interconnected, each action and reaction is vital. It appears we are past the tipping point with the environment, and the US government is the leading terrorist on the planet, but if we are NOT on our true paths, then are we terrorists also? Virtually all of my work is interactive. Stuff that just sits there, on the floor, a wall, or a pedestal, always seems mute. There is a Buddhist belief that the central delusion of human existence is that each of us exists independently of everything around us. Interactivity is closely related to that. Interactive work demonstrates interconnectivity because it cannot exist without the input of a participant. We must ask how art can be interactive. Can a white cube, a truly artificial space that isolates art from our day-to-day lives present a valid view of our culture? Is this a role model for success? Does most art depend on this sort of space for its context–this self-contained space without real life references or interventions? Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, calls the essence of non-duality “realizing the nature of inter-being,” or surrendering some of your personal identity to free yourself. We are not isolated, just as political administration isn’t: artists, and the ripple effect our lives cause. I do not let Robert Oppenheimer off the hook for creating the nuclear bomb, or current American politics terrorizing the planet, any more than I do Andy Warhol for creating product-driven, consumerist “art.” Being dominated by economic ideals, competitively struggling for shows, income, personal survival, and conducting business in art fairs is a far cry from inter-being. If artists enjoy the journey by surrendering some personal identity, they will collaborate more easily with each other and the universe. That collaboration makes you free.Immortality is to labor at an eternal task.–Ernest Renan Scott Snibbee, Bill Viola, Suzi Gablik, Zen masters, and others who have snuck into my subconscious, inspired these writings.
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workshop and exhibit Prague, Czech Republic
April 2011: První ze série UMakArt International workshopů s rezidentem pražské Meetfactory Kalem Spelletichem (9.4.2011). First of the UMakArt International workshop series with Kal Spelletich (9.4.2011) youmakeart.cz http://vimeo.com/31326196
Jack Hanley gallery Show 8/2010 German Article translated:
The artist Kal Spelletich are hybrids of plant and machinery for his exhibition in New York not quite succeeded. But he talks about him, the words are not big enough. The visitor feels while in the gallery as on a fair. The California artist Kal Spelletich says he loves the planet, people, technologies and nature. And he also loves a not inconsiderable extent theinternets: He runs three websites and a blog can be found on Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. And in all these channels, he now calls for his exhibition at the Jack Hanley Gallery less a New Yorker to do than to save the world with technology. Now is dedicated to the 1960 born in Iowa Spelletich the ailing ecosystem, which he wants to retain a kind of cosmic-inspired, modern forestry in front of the people. For the people are no more important than the trees. For his project “Contemporary Cosmicism and Forestry” to make the Roboterenthusiast the world as it pleases him. For man is no more important in the bigger schemes of things than the ants. For this he has sawed a six meter high tree, it garnished with pine cones and lichen and connected to a remote-controlled machine: Sun wobbles now a once proud, Northern California Monterey Pine, screwed on metal supports, helpless with its remaining branches and acts as a fairground attraction from days gone by. Kal Spelletich himself speaks of a “Frankenstein” because he had created – of an “unholy alliance” that would make mankind to think, for “the trees do not need us, but we need them,” he says. The most successful exhibit of the show is this, 15 large formats photographs from hacked digital camera and, fortunately, the best interests of the visitor, who stand with so much technologically enhanced concern for the world a little snack: can a machine for Barbecue “feeding the masses,” as they call Spelletich. The ominous-looking device looks as if it belonged to the household of “Mad Max”. Hot dogs are skewered and over a flame in a circle it around. The poor sausage. Now, many artists have tried to move with the help of machines, the boundaries between nature and culture – one thinks about at Panamarenko utopian flight vehicle or the fantastic body prosthesis of the Australian Stelarc. What is thought of as a critical commentary on the human Spelletich disregard for nature, however, acts as an insight into the garage of a crazed hobbyist. His self-made robots are in the era of ubiquitous simulacra more cosmic and fantasticals! Gallerist Jack Hanley, who has moved his operation from San Francisco three years ago, the trendy and expensive Tribeca, like it: He has committed to the artists for its summer exhibitions in the next three years. Finally, “That’s entertainment is wholly art that anyone can relate to ands these californians are truly up to something far beyonds these europes.” Even if it is not sold. The hobbyist Spelletich fully accepts that, were the only ones who ever really had shown commercial interest in its machinery, the military and a few Hollywood studios. Nevertheless, he is the visionary: “I want to show the path the unblinding reliance these natures we have in them, or at least slow their decline. And I thought I should therefore start before my own doorstep. “Is the Manhattan gallery scene, the new meeting place for the do-gooders? Of Course! More of a hot spot this summer. Crown of the New Yorks! **********************************************************************************
KAL SPELLETICH-California Investigative Healing CRAIG BALDWIN-Mock Up on MU Jack Hanley 136 Watts Street, TriBeCa Through Sept. 5, 2009 Despite the supposed secularism of the art world, many artists subscribe to one or another form of New Age belief. Often, however, their works undercut any apparent piety with self-effacing humor or comical exaggeration, as the San Francisco artist Kal Spelletich does in an amusing show of interactive sculptures ostensibly designed to promote well-being. The main attraction, “Herb Alpert Upper Body Hydro-Pneumatic Pulsation Vacu Engine,” is a table on which clumsily made, toylike machines are displayed. A hand crank attached to the table produces electric power when, with some effort, it is rotated. This causes some of the machines to light up or move around and a turntable to play one of Mr. Alpert’s old records. How does this promote healing? It’s the cardiovascular workout produced by turning the crank. Whether Mr. Spelletich is a secret believer in New Age healing is hard to say, but taken at face value, his work appears to be a species of social satire. That seems to be the case as well with a film by Craig Baldwin, another San Franciscan, that is also at the gallery that Spelletich is featured in. Titled “Mock Up on MU,” the film is a feature-length montage of old B-movie clips, industrial documentaries and newly shot scenes having to do with the Scientologist L. Ron Hubbard; the occultist Marjorie Cameron; and Jack Parsons, a founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was a follower of the British occultist Aleister Crowley. It is a hoot and an excellent companion to Mr. Spelletich’s daffy sculpture. KEN JOHNSON
Chocolate Factory at Jack Hanley Gallery 2009
Chocolate Covered Vitamin C Tablet Machine **********************************************************************************
SF MOMA Rejection letter
HAHA! like the 12th time i have been nominated and rejected for this silly shit!
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= Kal Spelletich is a Bay Area-based machine artist. ———— [His] performances invite audience members to directly operate and interact with their machines, robots and kinetic art [in] real-life experiences… He has been delving into bio-morphic inputs, sensing the human body and using those signals to trigger the machines/robots/pyro. Virtually anyone who attends a performance has the chance to operate a machine that can, well, kill them — but will empower them instead. ———— I’ve been to a number of his performances, and they’re as fun as they are frightening. What differentiates him from a number of other so-called “robotics artists” or “machine performance groups” is a sense of playfulness and exploration. His performances aren’t about machine-against-machine combat, or blasting the audience deaf with supersonic booms that liquefy your guts — rather, it’s more of an exercise in sensory fusion. In other words, synaesthesia. They’re also positively beautiful (I’m thinking in particular of one piece called “Icarus” that involves a wearable set of flaming, robotic, metal wings). ———— Kal’s shows compel the audience to sort of fuse themselves with the machines, become one of the machines, perceive the world and their place within it differently as a result. Participants control (or are temporarily controlled by) the art-bots, many of which are engineered to respond to human biological data. In a kinetic, visceral way, Kal’s work traces a sort of elusive, thin, membrane that separates the physical and digital worlds. by”Xeni Jardin” http://www.xeni.net/ <xeni(at)xeni.net> Xeni Jardin is a technology journalist and co-editor of the weblog BoingBoing . She hosts events exploring tech culture, and contributes to publications including Wired Magazine ,Wired News , and National Public Radio’s Day to Day .
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Art for the Ashcroft era san francisco bay guardian sfbg.com Lately mad scientist-artist-inventor Kal Spelletich has been building a lot of mutant polygraph machines, fusing the electrical guts of lie-detector devices – heart-rate, perspiration, and voice-stress analyzers – with strange and ominous robotics. One machine blows spinning halos of fire. Another uses a pen-equipped mechanical arm to scribble away on sheets of paper. All are hooked up to humans. Talk shit and these machines know – and respond. “This is kind of my PATRIOT Act twist,” laughs Spelletich, the driving force behind the Seemen, a critically lauded robot art troop. “I’m experimenting with the same medium our government is.” Spelletich brings an assortment of his interactive nightmare machines to the close confines of Valencia Street’s Jack Hanley Gallery for an intimate exhibition running through Feb. 28. Though he won’t be showing any of his massive flame-spitting pyro-robots, visitors get to play with a bunch of smaller, slightly less menacing interactive machines, like the Portable Castrator (which features a pair of snapping steel jaws) and a clawed steel hand that drags itself across a blackboard. Tonight’s opening features DJ Ragi Da Lawyer. Through Feb. 28. Opens tonight, 6-8 p.m. (gallery hours: Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.), Jack Hanley Gallery, 395 Valencia, S.F. Free. (415) 522-1623, www.jackhanley.com . (A.C. Thompson)
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FROM BUZZ TOWN by Beth LisickThe rain didn’t seem to keep anyone away from Kal ” Seemen ” Spelletich ‘s opening at the Jack Hanley Gallery Friday night.
Flocking to the first night of the machine-art show, moist robot lovers and free-beer seekers packed themselves inside the fogged-up gallery, steeped in that uncanny wool-sweater/shaggy-dog/hair-product fragrance of our own making. Mostly composed of prototypes for 20- to 40-foot-tall public sculptures, the show is a continuation of Spelletich’s life’s work: to make humans and machines more cozy with one another, even if someone has to get hurt. As people squeezed between exhibits, buzzers buzzed, gears grinded and the jagged bear-trap jaws of the portable castrator freaked people whenever it snapped shut. Go interact with Kal’s creations through the end of the month, but remember that you’re the only one responsible in case of loss, damage or injury. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/02/11/blisick.DTLSF WEEKLYSaturday, February 21, 2004 Ye Olde Castrator/ Jaws is a steel contraption inside a vintage suitcase, which, in the words of its creator, “has a movement sensor that is very moody and goes off when someone gets VERY CLOSE to its razor-sharp snappyjaws.” So it won’t come and get you, but people visiting Kal Spelletich’s show “Machines, Robots, Video” should probably think hard about where their appendages are relative to the art. The drawing machines, the whiskey-pouring machine (voted best by journalists!), even the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard machine: All these are, physically speaking, harmless. Several other pieces are extremely dangerous, and some could kill you — this is Spelletich’s hallmark. It’s all in the name of good art. Are you afraid of it? Do you respect it? Does your heart rate rise just to be near it? Well, good. You ought to be paying more attention to art anyway. The exhibition is up through Feb. 28 at the Jack Hanley Gallery, 395 Valencia (at 15th Street), S.F. Admission is free; www.jackhanley.com .http://www.artbusiness.com/hanley4.htmlComment: Kal Spelletich’s greased gunked gooked good contraptions do things like scribble, spark, grab, tear, and move endlessly back and forth. For convenient portability, a number of them are housed in beat-up banged-up raggedy dented old suitcases. You probably won’t be seeing these devices at Toys-R-Us anytime soon, so visit the gallery and experience this well-crafted imaginative participatory fun.
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ARTICLE by MELISSA MILLER 10/03 melissatmiller@hotmail.com SF State University paper ———————– If you were to climb into one of Kal Spelletichís art pieces, as many techies and brilliant-minded NASA engineers have over the years, you might have a near-death experience–and like it. One of Spelletich’s most famous pieces, Jaws of Life invites a participant to strap their torso, arms and legs to a metal bed frame that violently jerks up and down while bulldozer scoop-sized claws clamp closed mere inches away from their face while propane-fueled flames dance all around. For the uninitiated, it seems unfathomable why any person would choose to get inside a machine that can dismember a nose if a hinge comes loose, or cause third-degree burns if a straps falls off. But there are always takers at every show. Call it a modern rite of passage, or a new way for thrill seekers to get an adrenaline rush, but for 15 years, people have sought out performance shows by Spelletich and his artist collective, the Seemen, to have precisely this kind of experience. For Spelletich, mechanized art is the most exciting, relevant art on the planet. This San Francisco-based artist who is known in art circles around the world dedicates his life to making art that agitates, scares, and thrills. And if a few sacrifices in personal comfort have to be made along the way, Spelletich volunteers himself as the lamb.Today, Kal Spelletich, 42, rummages through a worn cardboard box filled with transformers and other electrical odds and ends. Heís looking for something to fashion into a ìbiomorphic inputî that will allow Slug, a neighborís dog, to operate a new robot under construction. Spelletichís fingernails are dirty, and there is a burn mark the size of a D battery on his right hand. He’s still short a DC motor, and he borrows one from a completed robot to test the circuits on the new piece. He paces the rubber mat-lined floor, installed to ease back strain caused by standing too many hours on concrete floors. It’s one the one of the few visible luxuries the Spartan mechanical artist allows himself. Everything in his Bayview warehouse, from the avocado green and brown-stripped couch where he reads The New York Times to the boxes of what seems like long-ago discarded appliances, seem to suggest that every material possession Spelletich owns was acquired second-hand. Donít cry for him Argentina’s he likes it this way. These are admittedly humble digs for a semi-famous artist who has contributed special effects for movies like the Matrix and Titanic, and wrote and acted his lines for Slackers. He is also the subject of numerous masterís degree theses about emerging trends in electronics-driven art, and lectures at renowned universities all over the world including M.I.T. and Parsons School of Design, and is a guest lecturer this semester at San Francisco State University, teaching art students about robotics. Even though heís been offered gigs that could have paid the rent on shelter more comfortable than his current 3200 square-foot metallic hull of a workspace whose 34-feet tall corrugated steel walls amplify both the summer heat and winter chill due to lack of insulation, Spelletich chooses to live frugally to remain artistically independent. Since he’s not forced to take a job just to cover the rent, he can make what pleases him, practicality be damned. He values his artistic integrityóand if he has to make a few personal, professional and financial sacrifices along the way, he has his eyes wide open.There is a certain punk aesthetic to the artistís approach. Thereís the poverty, of course. Most of the materials used in his art pieces were probably recovered from a dumpster. As independent filmmaker Craig Baldwin puts it, Kal reanimates dead metal. There is danger involved in many of the art pieces Spelletich is most famous for. In Spelletichís opinion, fear and fire are mediums as legitimate as clay and canvas (they’re the original paint). Basically, Spelletich is amused by art that is noisy, psychologically agitating, and challenges the definition of what constitutes art. Passive, traditional gallery experiences are bad. The audience physically interacting with art pieces is good. Which is probably why a museum would never want to showcase a Spelletich piece in a museum and would ever consent to allowing the public to physically interact with a piece they are they are charged with protecting for posterity. It’s hard to imagine a museum displaying a piece like Fireshower. A participant steps into a metal cage similar in size and shape to what Jacques Cousteau used to dive shark-infested waters. When inside, a gyroscope of flames spins around in varying directions, disorientating both the passenger and viewers alike. A wrong step by either party could spell serious injuries.In a fun, conceptual way, my work attempts to generate the kind of enlightenment gained by some after near-death experiences, Spelletich explained once in an M.I.T. magazine. But what really makes Spelletich’s approach to art so idealistic, if to the point of self-sabotage, is that he structures shows in a way where his audience, not him or even the art piece itself, becomes the star. What I really like about Kalís approach is that he puts the viewer in position of participant,î says electrical engineer and occasional collaborator Jonathan Foote. Spelletich refuses to operate his machines at gallery openings; but from his experience, there is never a shortage of volunteers. While it holds to the punk rock ideals of egalitarianism, itís undermines the cult of personality necessary to catapult an artist who is still alive and creating work from the level of unknown, poor craftsperson to ìstarî art personality. As a result, he hasnít become a celebrity who can command thousands of dollars for appearances and partake in the other perks enjoyed by Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, and current multi-millionaire Dale Chihuly ñ who can charge Las Vegasís Bellagio Hotel $11 million dollars for a hotel lobby ceiling that he didnít even handcraft himself ñ but merely only had to put his ideas on paper for his assistants to produce.
BROKE BUT CONTENT Spelletichís financial situation doesn’t dismay him. Yeah, Iím broke. But it’s the life I chose. I always need parts. And sometimes I’m forced to choose “do I buy a digital switch, or go on a date? [Shrugs.] I really have to like a girl to take her out for sushi.” In fact, he laughs about his most recent job offers he turned down this summer. Junkyard Wars, now a Discovery channel favorite, was looking for a new host. They went through the all the tapes from the first season, hoping that a former contestant might be suitable. Kal Spelletich, who appeared in an edition filmed in London, seemed like a he would be a natural. I got a call for Junkyard Wars the same week I was asked to do a porno, laughs Spelletich. I thought, “How appropriate.” He turned down both opportunities because they would be too distracting from making art, “it was lame” and championing worthy political causes like Cruz Bustamonteís gubernatorial campaign and Matt Gonzalezís mayoral bid. Spelletich subsidizes the cost of making art by running a continuous solicitation for parts on his Web site, Seemen.org. Currently, he is asking for a genuine F.B.I. lie detector, someone to insure a gas-motor powered air compressor, a race car trailer, a jet engine, and someone to pray for him. There is more art philosophy to explain, but itís 1:10 in the afternoon and Indian Summer sun has raised the temperatures under the corrugated steel roof. The chimes of a bicycle-peddling ice cream man promises a vanilla popsicle with raisins. Spelletich walks outside and greets the man by name. CITIZEN KAL To separate Spelletich, the artist, from Spelletich the citizen, is hard to do. His robot pieces are political in nature. It’s a political statement to make art that can’t be co-opted. To make art that can’t be bought and sold is a big Fuck You [to the art world]. It does hinder you financially, Spelletich continues. But it allows for the luxury of becoming indifferent to critics and in his words, make art that is more honest. Kinetic art is hard to show, because no one buys it; you mostly see this kind of art at festivals. says Will Linn, co-owner of the Tenderloin gallery, Rx, which recently curated an art exhibit of kinetic art that included a Spelletich piece. Linn says he and his partners subsidize the cost of the space by leasing the gallery out to private parties, so that the gallery can stage shows by artists they love without having to be concerned whether or not a show can be commercially successful. Artists using technology defies the concept of a museum, which is set up to showcase and preserve art that has stood the test of time. They aren’t going to risk showcasing emerging artists. Besides, they aren’t set up with technical support to assist with the hardware and software of robots. PASSING THE BATON At SF State, Spelletich’s class is part lecture about kinetic art history, and part workshop on how to survive as a working artist. The class gives Spelletich a forum to tout some of his favorite artists and ideas: Rube Goldberg, Adbusters, Michael Moore, and similarly liberal minded folks who want to shock people through humor into thinking deeply about the world they live in. He considers himself a scholar of Marcel Duchamp, who is famous for placing a urinal in a gallery and calling it art, among other intellectual pranks. Spelletich has amassed enough research on the guy to probably earn him a Ph.D. if he was motivated to actually write a thesis about it. Then the conversation shifts to the practicalities of making art. What if you donít get a gallery showing how do you show your art? You do show it anyway, Spelletich says. You just stage a guerilla show. You just do it. The young students, probably half of which are not old enough to drink legally, search Spelletich’s face to see if this is just another one of his prankish statements. They wonder how many laws does an artist have to break to make it? When asked how many laws Spelletich has broken, he says, What time of day is it?î They surmise he’s not kidding this time. Spelletich spouts off other ways he’s defied conventional career paths the Skywalker Ranch job he turned down, the Lollapalooza tours he turned down five years in a row. The Maxim magazine feature story. All turned down for various creative or ethical reasons. Though there is no physical proof of these job offers, Spelletich comes across as credible. He’s not protecting a life many would envy. He tells the class, Don’t follow me to my demise; find their own middle ground. He lays out the three golden rules that he has lived by that have given him the financial freedom to be indifferent to critics: 1) Don’t get into debt 2) Don’t get married (before turning 30) and 3) Don’t have kids. Or at leats postpone this into your 30’s!! He says that by keeping his overhead costs low, and not creating financial obligations for himself, he’s been free to live the life he wants to lead, which is really the point. He’s creatively satisfied, and if critical acclaim doesn’t come in this lifetime, there is always the next. It really comes down to making art that physically affects people, art that makes people better citizens. If a person reflects back just once on their experience with one of my art pieces, Spelletich says simply, I’ve succeeded. Pencils scribble furiously.
by: chris norrisphoto: jeff mintonIt looks like something out of LOST IN SPACE-rigged on a late-60’s TV budget and production schedule. This incredible metal contraption, about the size of a telephone booth, has a ring of vertical poles inside. The poles carry propane gas and, when lit, spin around encircling the lucky occupant in a column of fire. Obviously this sort of thing requires a controlled environment. Standing in his workspace, surrounded by homemade guillotines and Oly empties, Kal Spelletich is not what one would call a controlled environment.A boyish 38 with a narrow Affleckian face and wearing a heavy cotton workshirt, Spelletich looks very much like the punk-rock scenester he was a decade ago in Austin, Texas. There he used to hang out with the likes of the Butthole Surfers and Scratch Acid. Now he makes machines like the Fireshower. He has offered me a test drive. “Man, I fuck myself up once a week making this stuff,” he says when queried on his safety record. “Its just me, bumbling.” Ah.
Spelletich kneels down by the spigot of a large propane tank, connected to the fireshower. “Hold on a minute,” he tells me. He stands up and steps away to retrieve a fire extinguisher. “Just for some semblance of safety.” He looks down at the machines base. “Hmmm..I should prop this up, its gotten really wobbly. Let me get a wedge…” He fiddles with the bottom. “Okay,” he says, looking at me. “You’re not wearing polyester…Your hair is short…Good” He tells me to get inside. “Move forward a little,” Spelletich says. “Okay, don’t move. If you want me to stop, just go ‘STOP!’ “And youwill want me to stop.” I offer that I already want it to stop. “No, its cool. You’ll like it.” He turns the valve by the propane tank and suddenly the sickly smell of the gas is everywhere. I seem to remember a public service announcement about this. “Okay, just a second,” says Spelletich. He reaches up with a pilot lighter. Flick, flick,.. It ignites. Big plumes of flame billow all around me. “Don’t worry,” Spelletich says, smiling distantly. Then he spins an electric switch, and the flaming cage starts spinning around me. A curtain of fire is spinning inches from my face. My eyebrows are getting singed. My ears are burning. Combustion seems imminent. “Stop!” Spelletich doesn’t appear to hear me. “Stop!” The flames go out. The cage slows its spinning. I have not combusted. Spelletich, grinning informs me that some women have done this naked.
Kal Spelletich is neither sadist Nor pyromaniac. But he does fit a certain psychological profile. There it is in the DSM-1V:Robot Maker (see also, mechanical Artist). More specifically, Spelletich is one of the creative technicians currently toiling in the late-’90s wake of Survival Research Laboratories, now 20 years old. They are a distinct social group. It is late century folk art, it is industrial culture. A technological subculture. Time, industry and invention are invested in something that has no practical application at all.Inside a former auto-repair garage, Kal Spelletich reflects on life in the world’s biggest robot scene. “What I like is that it’s not market-based,” he says, “Here, people are working in this really crazy, pure way. A place like New York, you can’t just go there, set up a shop and start cranking out robots.”Spelletich may be partially a product of S.R.L.-having worked there for years-but he is also a different, recognizably old-school sort of folk artist. The son of an Iowa construction-company owner, he was raised around tractor pulls and demolition derbies. His homegrown mechanical expertise later meshing with art-school exposure to dadaists and Duchamp.
While he cites Greek mythology and French surrealists, Spelletich’s work shows a much more apparent influence: the quirky humor, lo-fi production values, and roughshod emotionalism of American punk rock.Spelletich says, “for one thing, audience participation is key. I get people involved in running the machines,” he says. His latest works are grisly carnival rides, steel cages that spin around audience volunteers and flaming angels slamming into the cages. “My thing is for the individual, to get people to feel more alive, to witness their mortality,” he explains. “Like, oh my God, I can’t believe I’m running this giant mechanical arm that can swing around and kill me.”For another Spelletich’s machines reveal a soulful humanity. With his mechanical performance group SEEMEN he tells a story about each machine, why he built it, what he hopes it will do for the audience and then asks them why they want to operate it. Some of the stories are devastating. The Suicide Chair is a steel chair with a hydraulic arm that slams a huge bed of spikes down onto the seatback. A medieval simulacrum of Dr. Jack kevorkian, it was inspired by the death of Spelletich’s brother Andrew who languished with AIDS in the “AIDS-who?” Reagan era. “It was really fucked-up,” Spelletich says, standing next to the suicide chair. “Just to see him waste away like that. So I made this.” He releases the hydraulics, and the spikes come down with an echoing clang.This artist is no Ludite, opposed to the changes and incursions of the 21st-century tech-so much as an old school mechanical connoisseur, an aesthete of technology itself.Hans Moravec, a principal research scientist at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotic’s institute, respects this eccentric mechanical disposition. “If they wanted a high-paying job in high-tech, they could get one for the asking,” he says. “They could work at Pixar, say and still do artistic things and make money and we would all watch it on the big screens. Obviously that’s not what they want to do. They like their big pieces of metal that thrash around and blow fire. I think they’re artists at heart.”
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At An Unamed Warehouse in Downtown LA
A peeling barn roof sloughs the soul of aged wood in the calm before the spectacle that is to silence and solemnity what Saddam was to the Kurds. “You get to run a machine that can kill you. It’s fun!” Demonstrating 10 interactive mechanisms, Seemen’s Kal Spelletich speaks down a bullhorn: “These are experiments, so there’s no right or wrong.” An EKG measures a huge dog’s heartbeat across a gently drifting jazz backdrop. The somatic sounds make a small machine march and bark flame; an altered chew toy opens and closes demonic metallic flower petals. “Kali,” a velvet chair with spindly metal arms, is operated at the armrests by a fetching volunteer in fine footwear. The scent of raped ozone oozes as a hacked lie detector belches flames from a halo over another volunteer’s head whenever her lies manifest.A man rotates in a chair through hugely blinding bursts of flame to gasps of amusement and amazement. Spelletich exults: “The coolest thing I think I can do is empower people.” A walking machine fitfully mimics a subject attached to a kludge of ripcords and coffee bean-sensing technology. Malfunctions occur: “So close — it’s like a dry fuck!” A lovely lady girds a strap-on flamethrower, resulting in a burning sensation. A hydraulic flying carpet nearly throws a tenacious volunteer, but he stands steadfast, and a “fire shower” holds a subject in a rapidly rotating cage of flame spit outward in centrifugal-forced fury. The “Hugging Machine,” a padded hydraulic press (like those of modern slaughterhouses that comfort cattle before they ascend the Stairway to Heaven) propagates mothering endorphins as it clasps tightly. Finally, the “Ring of Fire” (propane tanks propelling rhythmic fireballs) surrounds a man until the gas dies, and that’s that. (David Cotner)
New York’s Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc., received a $10,000 grant to support The Future of the Present 2000 — which, according to the NEA, is a series involving ten residences in live art netcasts to a worldwide audience in collaboration with Pseudo Online Network. According to Franklin Furnace, SEEMAN [one of the projects supported by the grant to Franklin Furnace] is “the effort of Kal Spelletich, an art drop-out and extreme technology inventor who enjoys exploring his taste for the dark side of technology. They see themselves as postindustrial folk artists. The actions of their robots poetically symbolize man’s struggles and triumphs: life/death, endurance, military grade technology…. These machines have been inspired by a Buddhist sect that uses shock and violence to attain enlightenment.”
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a FEW YEARS ago My buddy Rudy Rucker and I co-parented a dog, Slug, he grew up in my warehouse. We hooked up a fire-breathing walking machine to him via an EKG and a voice stress analyzer for a DORKBOT event once. I had done this to people a lot, little did i realize that a dogs heart beat is like twice as fast as a humans.heres about 20 pictures of it:http://srl.org/karen/dorkbotsf6/pages/54.htm
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[…] A short excerpt from the article on moi by the incredible Virgillia D’Andrea. Virgillia, whom has written a 12 page! essay on my life and work. That is included in the attache cases.The de-skilling of entire generations of labor force through the dependence on disposable corporate products. With the export of manual labor to China, the American”democracy” has created an infantile populace and generations that are ignorant of changing the spark plugs in a car, replacing a lightbulb, navigating a city without a phone or a drive service and horrified and clueless about how to skin a rabbit. When the subsidies of capital supporting the ‘new’ sharing community such as uber or delivery of groceries dwindles will this generation know how to get around let alone feed themselves?Case in point: Uber, Waze. Answer: learn to make things. Spelletich can build a house, skin a rabbit and wire and construct a robot.https://kaltek.wordpress.com/pressmedia/ […]
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Promise of Play PBS Documentary said this on July 11, 2018 at 3:55 am |
[…] A short excerpt from the article on moi by the incredible Virgillia D’Andrea. Virgillia, whom has written a 12 page! essay on my life and work. That is included in the attache cases.The de-skilling of entire generations of labor force through the dependence on disposable corporate products. With the export of manual labor to China, the American”democracy” has created an infantile populace and generations that are ignorant of changing the spark plugs in a car, replacing a lightbulb, navigating a city without a phone or a drive service and horrified and clueless about how to skin a rabbit. When the subsidies of capital supporting the ‘new’ sharing community such as uber or delivery of groceries dwindles will this generation know how to get around let alone feed themselves?Case in point: Uber, Waze. Answer: learn to make things. Spelletich can build a house, skin a rabbit and wire and construct a robot.https://kaltek.wordpress.com/pressmedia/ […]
Goings On | 12/09/2019 – Franklin Furnace said this on March 31, 2021 at 6:14 pm |