Movement Machines: Kinetic Art and Performance

Catalog description

Blood flows through your veins, sound travels through the air, the clock ticks, a record spins, animals roam the earth, and the internet crosses oceans through submarine cables. Movement is everywhere. This hands-on studio class will combine kinetic sculpture and performativity to explore the relationship between human bodies and sculptural machines. Students will be introduced to the practical aspects of working with motors, electricity, and gears and will experiment with the intersections of kinetic art, engineering, dance, and gesture to explore our mundane relationships with objects and technology to suggest new dynamics, hierarchies, and intimacies between humans and machines. While contemporary digital and cyber cultures are dematerializing our interaction with the physical world to representations, simulations, and avatars, their dependency on natural resources and human labor often remains invisible. This course will draw the connections between the natural, the mechanical, and the technological through kinetic art and performances to foster interspecies collaborations between humans and non-humans that will culminate in presentations of multidisciplinary kinetic experiences for live audiences.