Jackson Pollock splashed paint onto a canvas. Prince Jurgen von Anhalt took this method to the next level by using the blast of an airplane's jet engine to spray paint onto a canvas.
There have been a variety of studies examining how psychoactive drugs affect behavior and creative output. But could smells also have a psychoactive effect? That was the question posed in a 1958 experiment conducted by scientist Leo H. Narodny — published in an obscure trade journal, The Perfumery & Essential Oil Record. Narodny wrote: "It may be possible, by inhaling certain odours, to influence creative imagination without endangering the whole brain by an excessive dosage of drugs."
He used a textile designer as his test subject. Every day, for two weeks, he had her draw a design while breathing unscented air. Then, after breathing in air saturated with an odorous essential oil (such as bergamot, vanilla, peppermint, or cedarwood), she drew a second design. Some of the results are below.
It was hard to draw conclusions based on such a small sample size, but Narodny felt that the designer tended to draw more abstract patterns when exposed to the essential oils.
In 1997, artist Francis Alÿs spent a day pushing a large block of ice through the streets of Mexico City until it fully melted. Try that in Phoenix in the summer and you'd get about half a block before the ice would be gone.
In 2013, he kicked a flaming ball through the streets of Juarez.
Gnaw comprises two 600-pound cubes – one of chocolate, the other of lard – and a three-paneled, mirrored cosmetic display case. Using her mouth as a tool, Antoni nibbled the corners of both cubes, leaving visible teeth marks in the material. The chocolate fragments, blended with spit, were melted down and cast into 27 heart-shaped packages for chocolates, while the lard residue was combined with wax and bright red pigment to create 135 tubes of lipstick.
This installation enables a live plant to control a machete. plant machete has a control system that reads and utilizes the electrical noises found in a live philodendron. The system uses an open source micro-controller connected to the plant to read varying resistance signals across the plant’s leaves. Using custom software, these signals are mapped in real-time to the movements of the joints of the industrial robot holding a machete.
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.
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.