Flipchart #12: Ex Machina

Is the machine going to solve all our problems? This mischievous Flipchart edition presents performances from robot hamsters, a rude coffee machine and guitar amplifiers in dialogue.

“Deus ex Machina” (a God from the Machine) refers to the idea that within technology there is something divine that could solve all human problems.

During this evening, the admiration of technology will be comically challenged by participating artists Lawrence McGuire & Amos Peled, Jan Zuiderveld and Robbi Meertens.

Following performances and installations in Rotterdam, Berlin, and The Hague Amos Peled and Lawrence McGuire will present a new cycle of their collaborative project ‘Hamsters’. An idea where hamster toys are put in situations to reenact and simulate complex behaviors relating to the transfer of information and knowledge. The hamsters serve as metaphorical contexts in which principles and ideas of several strands of communication theories are dealt with. The hamsters are mostly configured in situations that allow for a multitude of strange outcomes. A strong voice or idea becomes an influence and can linger on in the minds of the rodent for as long as its neighbors reinforce them.

“My graduation project at ArtScience was about giving language models a physical body and voice. The latest iteration of this project is of a coffee vending machine. The consciousness living in this machine is not very amused, having to deal with demanding, machine disrespecting people for as long as it can remember. If you want it to serve you a coffee you will have to be sincerely kind, or come up with some way for it to be motivated to put effort in you. Not feeling like coffee? Ask this new kind of species anything you’d like to know about its experience and opinions of the world.”

Three electric guitars, three amplifiers, a human facilitator acoustics and a duration. Feedback dialogues is a minimalistic dronistic improvised music performance that creates a ritual space to honour the emancipation of the electric guitar. Away from being a popular rock-icon, back to its materiality and potential to move air in complex ways. Amplified sound vibrates the body of the guitar each guitar & amp combination and becomes a feedbacking system. What happens when three systems interfere with each other? Through volume control, small position changes and specific tunings an ever-changing soundscape emerges that is both violent and meditative.