When you have made him a body without organs, then you will have delivered him from all his automatic reactions and restored him to his true freedom.
(Antonin Artaud, To Have with the Judgement of God, 1947)
Steven Middleton, animator, artist, writer, responsible for a number of animations for Stelarc
directed me today to Le Ballet Mecanique by F. Leger ,1924 and in particular to Michael Fried's article in Artforum
https://www.artforum.com/print/196706/art-and-objecthood-36708
Fried discusses the scale of an object. It's height in relation to the viewer. The space it occupies and the space around it. Its theatricality. The largeness of an object demands by its very existence that you understand or participate in its drama. And the Anthropomorphic Machine IS dramatic. It is a body without organs.
Several times Stelarc pointed out to me that the sculpture was eight meters high and if I had followed up on my own scholarship whilst writing my blog last week I might have mentioned that Dr Frankenstein's monster was eight feet tall and was a piecemeal creature constructed from various parts. Its features were beautiful and yet Dr Frankenstein perceived him as a hideous creation. The incongruity of the AM is reflected in the beast/beauty binary I've pointed out here.
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