The David Bowen Critical Response
David Bowen was a visiting lecturer to Art Center as part of the Design Dialogues series. He is a kinetic sculptor, and one of the common themes to his work is using a mechanical device to record, mimic or reference a natural occurrence or system. It is my perception that Bowen created his works with clear intention in their basic physical construction and hopes it be appreciated for its sublime and simple reflection. Indeed, one clear appeal to his art is his ability to give his mechanical creations a lifelike, animate, even perceptively frail quality.
David Bowen flipbook from Dustin York on Vimeo.
However, in his lecture he stated has no interest in making robots that seem conscious. My position is that in his artwork titled “Infrared Drawing Device”, where humans interact with the machine sensors to create the final drawings, he has in fact wandered into such territory. In that piece and another like it, he likened the human interaction involved as similar to the role flies played in his piece “fly drawing device”. In other words, I perceive that to mean that the drawings created are intended to be in the end little more than random texture with no conscious result. I believe it is pieces like Infrared Drawing Device where the audience will demand the most from it to be deemed successful. For instance, moving a hand to activate a sensor requires more meaning, more complexity to the specific interaction with the output, and then in the end it is no longer a device reflecting nature, which is a deviation from Bowen’s interests.
3 Frames of Bowen from Dustin York on Vimeo. This is showing the layout process in creating the flipbook.
From this point of view, I sought to create a piece referential to the tension in Bowen’s own work. I used the flipbook as my medium because it too is kinetic by its nature, and it similarly involves an iterative process in order to be able to reveal the whole. The footage I started with is of Bowen speaking at the lecture, his gestures completely natural in the course of conversation. I then set out to reflect how his movements could be recontextualized into seeming more mechanical, more deliberate, more repetitive. I attempted this by splicing in sequences of myself from a similar angle, deliberately studying and mimicking his gestures. The flipbook requires a natural gesture, that of physically interacting with the flipbook to simulate the creation of these robotic, mechanical motions; the opposite aim of the majority of Bowen’s pieces. In this way I hope to achieve a looping reverberation with the artist’s work.