REVIEW ARTICLES
The Lightness and Weight of Machines:
The Metaphor of Kinetic Art in Choe U-Ram’s Works
Chen Yung-Hsien (Professor, National Taiwan University of Arts)
Translated into English by Jen-feng Kuo
The Pursuit of Speed and Rhythm in Movement
The human mind has never stopped the imagination of image movements. It acts to test theorems of movement in physics and explores how to present kinetic art. In February 1909, Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1878-1944) published Futurist Manifesto on Le Figaro, celebrating the arrival of the mechanical age with an unprecedented feel of speed it brings forth; Marinetti also expressed his enormous fascination in all mechanical structures like cinema, airplane, and even weapons.
In visual art, kinesis informs notions of physical movement and rhythmic dynamics. Kinetic Art is visual or plastic art that explores movements or their characters through principles of physics and machinery. Kinetic force is not restricted to the static form of the art; it creates visualmotions in artworks and, for the mobile artworks with time progression in particular, it expands the possibility of imagination and the non-material being that emerges in their movement.
This is how the futurist artists of the early twentieth century often expressed their beliefs in moving, dynamic forms as well as kinetic art beyond the senses through presenting the speed, the light, electricity, aviation, the modern city, and even the war. They usually reflected a reality of modern life: the visual expression of their work tends to repeat, superimpose, and simulate frames, and to highlight the motion with lines and colors, so that the movement and the notions of time and dynamics are articulated.
Such an artist desires the pursuit of kinetics and a breakthrough of the confinement of time and speed. Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), for instance, attempts a presentation of swaying vibration in his works through repeated lines and residual images, where overlapping visions express a trembling feel, suggesting obscure senses of time and motion. In his “Plastic Dynamism”, Boccioni believes that objects are never static, that they are constantly in motion, interposing and intersecting one another so that they disclose a mentality corresponding with the rhythm in life of the mechanical age.
The concept of kinetic art allows the artist to employ machines, motors, electric parts, rollers or rotators, and control systems to present the motions and express a procedural order. The art form may include movement and dynamic qualities, and its content involves motions in time and space. The artist explores time, movement, and speed; to make kinetic force into art concerns not only creative belief but also media materials. Kinetic art uses machines and metals as media, among other objects, and established artists in the field include Alexander Calder (1898-1976), George Rickey (1907-2002), Nicolas Shôffer (1912-1992), Pol Burry (1922-2005), Jean Tinguely (1925-1991), VassilasTakis (1925-), and Heinz Macz (1931-).
Artists of the contemporary time are determined and experimental in how they aesthetically express motion, movement, and speed in their work. Rebecca Horn’s mechanical installations are motor-engineered to mobilize appendages to extend the body and the senses; with calm and slow mechanical moves, Horn creates her own fashion of kinetic appeal. In another instance, Tsai Wen-Ying(蔡文穎) deploys materials like mechanical metals, motorized resistance bars as well as electronic and computer control systems to create his works. Tsai’s works embody the tensions of vibration, motion, and resonance; their rhythmic impressions also give enormous visual pleasure for the audience.
With the development of the information age, the artists are even less restricted in terms of material, where electronic equipment provides more choices and computer technology becomes a new trend; they are also necessary in contemporary life. The form of kinetic art also extends to electronic machine, laser light, interactive sensor, and other related technologies in new media, constantly expanding the application of materials to stimulate creative variety and diversity.
The Search of Creative Inspiration in Mechanical Power
The idea of kinetic art is to express nonmaterial forms like movement through electric, wind or water forces. When mechanical structures produce movements, lights, sounds and smokes with an electronic control system, they present another aspect to kinetic sculpting installation as well as kinetic art. Choe U-Ram’s works are clearly an example.
Choe U-Ram’s interest in machines begins in family. His grandparents both came from the background of engineering, and his parents majored in the arts, which together would have profound impact on him. In his childhood Choe loved animation programs of robots; he would draw robots and dream of the robots protecting his families and friends. Upon college, Choe wanted to major in engineering, but for some reason he turned to the arts. At Chung-Ang University, majoring in sculpture in the College of Arts, he became in touch with kinetic art of the West. Choe purchased a second hand motor and made a moving sculpture; his childhood passions for machines were awakened, encouraging him to pursue in kinetic art in years to come.
From Choe’s works like Self-Portrait (1977) and Self-Portrait (2012), one sees his knowledge of and familiarity with taking the machines apart, assembling and reassembling mechanical parts, and eventually structuring them into an artwork. Electric power is the primary source of power for Choe’s kinetic works, engineering structures of mechanical linkages to operate the gears, where all the mechanical parts move, turn, and shine. Such has been the way Choe creates his art.
Mechanical Power Projected in Metaphors
Humans create, and they aspire to create alternative beings. Mechanical creatures are made with the mimicry of life; they evolve and are reborn into a new life form, and they are seen in Choe’s works of kinetic art.
n other words, Choe creates new living beings by mechanical structures, kinetic principles, and designs of simulated organism. How to fit cold, lifeless machines in kinetic art? How to give a new interpretation of the machines? As Choe states, “I have always imagined the ‘machine gods’ to be; I would try and portray them, like the aircrafts, cars, or robots in Transformers”.“Anima Machine is a different species than human being but can coexist with us”. “Machine is born out of the desires of humankind, and I intend to discover my own imagination of machines of the future”. This is how Choe’s works are distinct by simulating organic forms, mimicking their shapes, building those shapes into machines with powered technologies, and creating parables accordingly.
One can observe the chronicle of Choe U-Ram’s art in three contexts: the metaphor of mythic creatures, the imagination for peculiar creatures, and the combination of machines and light & shadow. I shall discuss as follows:
1. The Metaphor of Mythic Creatures
Choe draws from myths and fills his works with references, signs and symbols, making his art rich with metaphors. In this sort of works, their name would come from languages like Latin and Sanskrit, referring to both religious belief and social reality, which eventually blend into each other. The subject of Choe’s art ranges from religious stories to legends, connecting social events with images of mythic creatures in the past. Now, under Choe’s magical touch, those images are brought back to life in front of the audience.
Choe’s 2011 work Custos Cavum, for instance, is inspired by Shiva of Hinduism and the shape of a seal. One is restless and the other silent and still, and they symbolize two corresponding parties where the guardian is connected to the sign. Shiva is also called Mahadev, which means the destroyer and also the resurrected. In this work, the posture of Shiva, or Mahadev, signifies the purpose of a guardian, articulating creation, preservation, destruction, and the power reserved in as well as releasing from the body. All the ideas materialize in the shape of curving metal twigs, surrounding the metallic body, which serve as the symbol protecting the deity. In Scarecrow (2012), Choe draws from the vocabulary of the angel and the demon, as the work stands alone with a slender body and long wings. The angel spreads and sways its wings, shedding dim light from its shallow body; from the cracks there reveals all the lights and shadows, reflecting on and moving into one another. Scarecrow embodies the metaphor that light and darkness—or good and evil—coexist. All the above mentioned artworks reflect a compassionate mentality through the impression of a protector vis-à-vis the protected around it.
On the other hand, Cakra, completed in 2008, materializes in the form of a massive beehive with irregular rotation and switches. The light goes on and off as if it engages in contact with the darkness that one moves with another. The arrangement and operation of the gears seems like turning mandalas, repeatedly turning in and out, when the entire structure is situated in the same space with the time of the spin. In a similar vein, Ouroboros of 2012 draws from the story of the serpent dragon in myths, where the serpent dragon appears to be eating its own tail, with all the blades forming into a circular structure in waving, rhythmic movement. The dragon’s mouth signifies birth, and the tail symbolizes death; its body rests between being swallowed and disappeared, the mind pure and easygoing with the karma. Indicated here is the endless reincarnation of life; it is a metaphor of rebirth, and it is also a sign of eternal revolving.
Choe U-Ram refers to religious and mythological legends of the East, and invests his imagination in mechanical operation and the images of outlandish creatures; they all become subjects on which Choe’s sentiments rest. The outlandish creature sways its body, guided by mechanical movements, supremely mighty just as described in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, “There is a god here who looks like a yellow sack. He is scarlet like cinnabar fire. He has six feet and four wings. He is Muddle Thick. He has no face and no eyes”. As if responding to this, Choe’s art introduces an interpretation of mechanical mobility in his portrayal of myths and legends, and the mechanical kinetic combination adds to the imaginary, mysterious flavor of his works.
2. The Imagination of Simulated Creatures
As works of imagined nocturnal floating subjects, Choe’s Urbanus of 2006 presents female figures slowly and gently unfolding the blades, like a plant undergoing photosynthesis, blinking lights to release kinetic power and constantly invoking procreating desires in the floating subjects with their folding and unfolding. Opertus Lunula Umbra, of 2008, is an imaginary creature in the shape of a chrysalis, with tentacles growing out of its dimly glowing larval body. It breathes up and down, rhythmic with the machines, quietly absorbing all the lights and then reflecting them, where all the rays of light eventually merge into a formless texture.
We also see in Urbanus, IMAGO (2014) the image of a larva morphing its wings, like a peculiar life form maintaining its rhythmic movement. It’s as if it is floating in the air or swimming under water, mingling the opposite powers of absorption and discharge. The state of squirming produced by the machines depicts an evolving process; the creature seems to be photosynthetic, slowly responding to the rhythm and disclose and folding itself. Regarding the origin and evolution of species, the family of Choe’s simulated creatures also includes Ultima Mudfox (2003), Jet Hiatus (2004), Nox Pennatus (2005), and Butterfly (2017). They are all Choe’s speculation and imagination of simulated creatures.
On the other hand, works like Una Lumino (2008) and Una Lumino Callidus-Spiritus (2016) are inspired by rocks by the sea as well as curl-footed crustaceans like barnacles. Such species live in hordes; they use their tentacles to consume planktons, and they open their shell at the rising tide to breathe. In Choe’s works, it has become the primary type of grouped movement to employ the mechanical structure, accompanied with rhythmic numbers and the cycle of light and shadow. All the works mentioned above embody the passion for life, in the form of simulating organic differences or by interpreting the mutation of mechanical creatures. In connecting with the contemporary world and exploring into the historical time, Choe U-Ram observes various species so as to simulate and imagine that he proposes a liberated image for the mechanical creature in his mind.
3. The Combination of Machines with Light and Shadow
Aside from attending to composing mythic creatures and simulated organisms, Choe also attempts to deconstruct his own name. U-Ram becomes URAM, United Research of Anima Machine. Choe also announced a series of works by way of reports of pseudoscientific observation in the name of URAM. Meanwhile, he dissembled and reassembled machines to make new visual objects. In URC-1 (2014) and URC-2 (2016), for instance, he acquired the materials from discarded automobile parts at the waste park, including headlights, tail lights, electric wires, and iron sheets. He would weld them and make a sphere, an artificial sun, creating shimmering signs. For many, the fantastically decorated merry-go-round is part of the childhood memory, a place full of fun and imagination. Choe U-Ram’s Merry-Go-Round (2012) is a little merry-go-round set on a tall pedestal to make it look like a lighthouse, spinning to the beautiful music round after round. The horses turn and run faster, till the speed makes the music is out of tune. At last, the light rays become a blur, leaving ghost shadows, and the music turns into bizarre sounds like the screaming of running horses.
Also accompanied with marvelous, shining lights, works like Pavillion (2012), Gold Cakra Lamp (2013), and Gold Insecta Lamp (2013) reveal a similarly subtle narrative under the intersecting light and shadow engineered by the machines. On the other hand, Unicus-Cavum ad initium (2011) oozes dim light on the edges of the mechanical body, and the refracted lights and projected shadow invokes the imagination for the mysterious and attracts the audience.
The works in this regard, including materials like metal, motor, and roller, and the complex textures they compose, produce particular shapes assembled by the machines. Also in those works, light projects onto the white walls so that various changes can happen in images like refraction and focusing. On the other hand, under the projected light controlled by the machines, the distance between the object and the light is like the relationship between the light and the mechanical frame of the work, resituated in the video terrain outside of the simulations.
Epilogue: Hidden behind the Deconstructed Machines
In 1960, Jack Ellwood Steele (1924-2009) proposed the concept of Biomimetics, where he studied the characteristics and structures of organisms from the bionic approach. It was meant to advance the harmony of human being and the environment, which was a newly emerging field in biology. The impact of bionics serves as a landmark for the studies on the simulation of organisms, bionic theories, behavioral processes, functions of organs, physical and chemical changes within the body, and the technologies of bio-message transmission. In arts, the artists made similar efforts to combine bionic perspectives into their works, as seen in all the various objects of simulated organism or mechanical installation. In the application of mechanical installation, artists employ ordinary dynamic machines like industrial machines, agricultural tools, and transportation equipment; they also make extensive use of models like electricity generation and operation. What it comes to is a mechanical composition integrated with connecting rods, cams and gears to transfer kinetic energies, a system of chain movements providing rhythmic, relational actions.
Choe U-Ram’s works begin with kinetic entities, whose motors mobilize the artist’s childhood memories and experiences via cold mechanical exteriors. As we see in all the mechanized motions, turning gears have remained the element throughout Choe’s art, their rhythmic movement just like the sight of everyday life. From mechanical composition, three-dimensional modeling to installations, Choe’s works always have certain dynamic velocity. What concerns the lightness and weight of the machines is the mechanical interconnection as a process from the internal to the external; it is also a sign of life under the transformation of form. And the two interpretations appear to engage in recurrent conversations.
To conclude, Choe U-Ram employs kinetic principles in art, and he applies mechanical structures, motors, connecting rods, as well as techniques like principle drive, object assembling, and kinetic energy transfer; they are all interconnected in Choe’s artistic mind, and they allow him to move into the creative field of kinetic art. There are quite a few sub-themes in his works one may observe: pupation, caterpillar, butterfly, shark, serpent dragon and mythic creatures. As fictional creatures as well as symbols, they express a simulated world of histories and spaces, each intersected with yet independent from each other, and yet again, each is connected to one another. And the materials Choe employs reflect his innermost desires: his works are tough yet soft, exposing a contrast of harmony and contradiction. As his machines change angles, Choe also moves to attend to representing the transformation of myths and their metaphors in his art, as he also strives for the extension of simulated life through his works.
All in all, Choe U-Ram is concerned with the machines; he uses mechanical media to assemble prototypes, and he employs dynamics and mechanical structures to reflect on the metaphors of mythic creatures and simulated ones. In this manner, the cyclic mechanical movement, and mimicking the “kinetic” instinct of an animal, indicates more than the transformation of the shape; it is also the presentation of an organic life form. Out of personal experiences, with steel structure and the mechanical parts, through the physical trajectories, Choe U-Ram presents all sorts of bizarre imagination on mechanical beings. This wild imaginary world of Choe’s is twisted and rubbed between contemplation and metaphor, assisted with complicated kinetic technologies. Step by step, with persistence, faith, and concrete creative experiences, Choe’s dream of this imaginary world has come true.
