Thesis ideas have come together! I was on a quest, not only to figure out a concrete idea, but also how I could adapt animatronics and use it for more of an artistic purpose and pull it out from it’s theme park dinosaur context.

I’ve been surprised actually, I haven’t been able to find all that many artists using animatronics as a medium,.. Which holds potential, there’s so many people saying you can’t do anything new in art.
It doesn’t surprise me all that much, how many people can sculpt, program and build robotics. Not a widely occurring theme in for one singualr person. Lucky me. Still, means I have to build ground to stand on, and everything I’ve ever built has at some point set on fire… no that wasn’t a metaphor.

So how do I tie all these thoughts and skills into an art piece? I’ve had lots of ideas, but the final one became concrete while I was starring out the window on the train back to London (God I hate London). Leather notebook in hand I began to sketch.

Here’s an excerpt from my write-up (I actually wrote two), for everyone that’s been asking, without all the anti-consumerism and technical mombo jumbo.

“--a sculpture, probably in a gallery. The sculpture is a mock store display with action figure like packaging (20 or so units). There are small LCD display screens showing information and cheesy video clips about the products nearby, but you don’t look at the video, something else catches your eye… movement. The packages are moving…

Inside the packaging are squirrel sized animatrons. Strange animals, not totally recognizable, not totally flesh, they seem odd and adapted. More so, they are twitching, shaking, clawing, head butting their packaging, and generally, look to be in absolute pain. These are not plastic toys made in china. These are mass produced, copyrighted life; modified for consumption, as toys, cell phones, and light sources. Life wired up to serve. Racks of it.
Some of the animals though seem not willing to serve, one animal is crawling across the floor having escaped it’s packaging; unfortunately it’s legs broke in the fall, so it hasn’t gone to far. Another animal didn’t even make it to the floor, it has become impaled on the hook 2 rows down.”

It should be a fairly large undertaking and worthy of thesis. It’ll also be twisted as hell…