New Mexico, 1961.
Chico MacMurtrie–ARW
AmorficRobotWorks, Red Hook NYC, 1991.
Since the late 1980s, Chico MacMurtrie has explored the intersection of robotic sculpture, new installation, and performance. MacMurtrie’s work investigates organic life from the inside, exploring geometry in all vius systems. Chico MacMurtrie and his interdisciplinary collection Amorphic Robot Works/ARW have won numerous awards for six experimental works of art in our mitjans, including five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation grant, the Rockefeller Foundation grant, VIDA Life 11.0 and the Prix. Ars Electronica. Chico MacMurtrie will receive the Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts in 2016 and the Map Fund Grant in 2019.
Inspired by his six-year residency from 1987-1989 at the Exploratorium, a science and art museum in San Francisco, Chico founded Amorphic Robot Works (ARW) in 1991. It became a collective of artists, engineers and scientists in constant change, dedicated to exploring. the potentials of machine movement, intelligence and response capacity. What they shared was the desire to create an interactive robotic sculpture that reflected on the human condition.
While ARW’s production during our first decade included mostly metal machines and structurally defined robotic sculptures, Chico has focused since 2006 on developing Organic “soft machines” based on inflatable components. Designs and constructions at larger scales, these things are ephemeral, and following independent or air suspensions, use the air pressure/buit to inflate and deflate through various articulation states. They exhibit the phenomena of gradual metamorphosis, growth, decay and interaction.
Since 1991, more than 60 crew members from two countries have participated in the creation of ARW’s sculptures and robotic installations. With the help of our talented and collaborative workers, the complex and large-scale efforts of Amorphic Robot Works are not possible. ARW will also welcome numerous scholarships from academic institutions, and those in general, who have made lasting contributions or who have continued involvement.
MacMurtrie/ARW’s works have been presented to major museums and cultural institutions in the world, such as the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), Beijing; Hayward Gallery, London; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris; Museu Universitari d’Art Contemporani (MUAC), Ciutat de Mèxic; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, New York; Shanghai Biennale; Tri Postal, Lille, (retrospective exhibition), Muffatwerk, Munic (Pneuma World); Ex-Dogana, Rome, and ZHI Art Museum, Chengdu.
His work in the collection: Border Crossers
http://amorphicrobotworks.org
Borders, 2017
Border Crossers includes a series of light robotic sculptures that poetically explore the notion of borders and limit conditions. The inflatable sculptures are raised to various floors and are held at a certain level. The new choreographed performance, originating from the border, would stage a symbolic connection. The project treats the border as a physical condition that can be temporally transcended by technological proxies. It offers a critique of militarized geopolitical borders, and a metaphorical suspension of these borders in the form of temporal arcs.
Border Crossers invites the public to rethink the notion of borders in a globalized world. Currently, technology helps overcome cultural and economic boundaries, but it is also frequently used to maintain and reinforce physical boundaries. This project contemplates technology in a positive way to establish dialogues beyond borders, to question borders and to create a symbolic suspension and transcendence of borders. The seven actions al·ludeixen the equality of humanity in a context of sources of tensions and conflicts for national and cultural identity. This “gest” could reinforce the hope of peace in a lloc when it is believed that reconciliation is impossible.
The Border Crossers project has received important financial support
.BEEP { col·lecció;} in 2017 and through the Guggenheim Fellowship.
MacMurtrie will be invited to a final workshop He built Border Crosser as a visiting professor and artist in residence at the Institute of Humanities of the UM in 2018 and at the University of Applied Arts (Angewandte) in Vienna in 2018/2019.