This machine came up from a workshop that 5 did with the crew of Time’s up in Linz - www.timesup.org
The initial idea was to play around with strange movements and how to make them mechanically possible. The suffering machine is a robot made with 3 arms or legs (depends on you) and these arms are connected in one point.
I used one motor for each arm, but one of them is weak, almost incapable of doing a proper movement. Other point is that each arm is different and this causes a different kind of movement in each one.
This dichotomy between work together and against in order to have a movement is what is interesting to me in this peace. And maybe because of that it creates a strong emotional relation with the audience, once that when you see it you have the almost automatically desire of helping the machine that always try to walk or exist.
When the peace falls and tries to stand up again is the strong moment of its existence and somehow it always finds a way to reconstruct itself.
Another behavior of this machine is that when someone gets closer in order to touch or suppose help the machine it kills himself as a contradictory behavior.
The Suffering Machine is full of contradictions and strange behaviors, maybe that is why so many people identify with it. |
