For Carl Andre is a 1970 artwork by Lynda Benglis. It consists of a heap of polyurethane foam sitting in the corner of a room. It's owned by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
The title refers to the sculptor Carl Andre, known for his ultra-minimalist works. For instance, one of Andre's more famous works, Equivalent VIII, consisted of a rectangular stack of bricks. The Fort Worth Art Museum catalog notes:
Benglis uses Andre's name in her piece, but the point she makes is not strictly pejorative. The work is an ironic and humorous homage to Andre's art, which is characteristically made of ordered, flat, modular shapes combined with simple slabs of metal or stone that sit directly on the floor or, like Benglis's piece, are installed in the corner.
So it's not "strictly pejorative," but maybe it's slightly so? Or satirical?
Explanatory text from Are Computers Alive? Evolution and New Life Forms, by Geoff Simons (1983).
A cybernetic sculpture, 'The Senster', was constructed by Edward Ihnatowicz in 1970 for the Philips Evoluon in Eindhoven. The device is a large electrohydraulic structure in the form of a lobster's claw: six hinged joints allow great freedom of movement. It is interesting that the device's unpredictable behaviour makes the observer feel that the sculpture is alive. Reichardt (1978) commented: 'It is as if behaviour were more important than appearance in making us feel that something is alive.' 'The Senster' has senses—sound channels (effective ears) and radar—to allow it to monitor its environment: it will, for example, react to the movement of people in the immediate vicinity. Electrical signals are fed from a control unit to activate mechanisms which cause movement in the device. The brain (a computer) has learning abilities and can modify the machine's behaviour in the light of past experience. Confronted by this artificial device, it is clear that people have no difficulty in organizing their psychological responses as if 'The Senster' were alive—an animal or another human being.
Watch it in action below. The people desperately trying to get its attention clearly hadn't watched enough horror movies to know what usually happens next in situations with sentient machines.
For only $3 a night, Colin White would rent out one of the drunks from his pub to liven up a party.
White explains that when people are worried about their parties getting off to a slow start, they call up and say: "Oh, Mr. White, I wonder whether you could send us around a drunk about 8:30 p.m.?"
So his employees could legitimately claim to be professional drunks.
1972: 19-year-old Bob Hall fell 3300 feet when his parachute malfunctioned. He landed face first on a runway. Somehow, he not only survived, but he only broke his nose and busted up his teeth.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.