He put the knife in the robot’s hand and caused the arm to raise. Then something went wrong.

Learn more about Thrilling Wonder Stories on Wikipedia

Artist statement:

“The study of mathematics is thought have begun in ancient India and China. “Zero” and “infinity” were not so much discoveries as human inventions. The notion of length with no width is very curious indeed, the pencil line I draw being only an approximation of an invisible mathematical line. Endeavors in art are also mere approximations, efforts to render visible unseen realms. Among the notes Marcel Duchamp left in his Green Box are various mathematical notations. The Large Glass attempted to throw projections of the unseen fourth dimension onto our three-dimensional experience, much in the same way that three-dimensional objects cast shadows onto two-dimensional surfaces. While not wholly subscribing to the post-Renaissance “rational” scientific regard on the natural world, I especially appreciate those eighteenth- and nineteenth-century optical devices and experimental implements that gave visible form to unseen hypotheses. I have photographed suites of “stereometric exemplars” purchased from the West during the Meiji era (1868-1911), now preserved by the University of Tokyo. The mathematical models are sculptural renderings of trigonometric functions; the mechanical models were teaching aids for showing the dynamics of Industrial Revolution-age machinery. Art resides even in things with no artistic intentions”. (from Sugimoto’s official website)

Read about the centrifugal governor.

Previously on Skandalon

Cybernetic Serendipity was an exhibition curated by Jasia Reichardt at the ICA London from August 2nd to October 20th, 1968: “Computer graphics were exhibited for the first time in 1965 in Germany and in America. 1965 was also the year when plans were laid for a show that later came to be called «Cybernetic Serendipity,» and presented at the ICA in London in 1968. It was the first exhibition to attempt to demonstrate all aspects of computer-aided creative activity: art, music, poetry, dance, sculpture, animation. The principal idea was to examine the role of cybernetics in contemporary arts. The exhibition included robots, poetry, music and painting machines, as well as all sorts of works where chance was an important ingredient. It was an intellectual exercise that became a spectacular exhibition in the summer of 1968.” (read more). See the related Wikipedia entry.

About Medien Kunst Netz (Media Art Net): “Media art—by definition multimedia, time-based or process-oriented—cannot be sufficiently mediated in book form. Mainstream art and cultural mediation, still being primarily print-based, do little justice to its specificity. On the other hand, Net-based media have not yet been able to establish platforms that reach more than the usual circle of insiders. Introducing the range of topics related to media and art, «Media Art Net» thus aims at establishing an Internet structure that offers highly qualified content by granting free access at the same time.” (read more)