Just came back from a lovely @longnow SALT presentation by Arthur Ganson, kinetic artist and maker extraordinaire. Ganson delivered a thoughtful and introspective talk, illustrated by video clips and images of several of his works. If you have never seen his sculptures, enjoy these examples from Ganson’s YouTube channel, dreamingmachines.
Untitled Fragile Machine. Not the same fragile machine he showed, but similar in composition. More mind-bending examples after the break…
Machine with Wishbone. Ganson described this as something like a self-portrait. “We drag our pasts with us and move according to unseen forces.”
Machine with Concrete. Twelve 50:1 reduction gears in series such that the last gear turns through one revolution every 2 trillion years.
Margot’s Other Cat. Hypnotic.
Machine with Grease. Erotic.
Ganson talked about his constant struggle to find the line between clarity and ambiguity in his art, seeking to make something which is crystal clear enough so you can understand what you are seeing, but also ambiguous enough so that you don’t understand what you are seeing. That tension awakens and drives the emotions and interpretations of meaning that the observer brings to the work. In “Machine to Soften Hardened Hearts”, a difficult new work that links questions of evil and forgiveness directly to the viewer’s physical actions, Ganson certainly finds that line.
