Date/Time
Date(s) - 10/01/2019
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Location
University of Applied Arts Vienna / Expositur Digital Arts
Categories
This talk will trace the evolution of MacMurtrie’s kinetic sculptures and robotic “soft machines”, and recount his creative journey and process of constant reinvention, experimentation and refinement. Today MacMurtrie/Amorphic Robot Works are widely recognized for their innovative “Inflatable Architectural Bodies” series. Designed and built at increasingly large scales, these “inflatable bodies” or “soft machines”, inflate and deflate through an articulated series of movements exploring the underlying essence of organic and nonorganic bodies.
For the last 30 years, Chico MacMurtrie has created metaphors with machines exploring the intersection of robotic sculpture, new media installation and performance. MacMurtrie and Amorphic Robot Works (ARW), an interdisciplinary collective he founded in 1991, have received numerous awards for their experimental new media artworks, including five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation Grant, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, VIDA Life 11.0 and Prix Ars Electronica. Chico MacMurtrie was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016.
MacMurtrie/ARW’s works have been presented in major museums and venues around the world including the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), Beijing; Hayward Gallery, London; Museo de la Reina Sofia, Madrid; Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporá neo (MUAC), Mexico City; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY; Shanghai Biennale; Tri Postal, Lille, (retrospective exhibition); Muffatwerk, Munich; Ex-Dogana, Rome and ZHI Art Museum, Chengdu. Upcoming exhibitions include: Mundos Alternos, Art and Science Fiction in the Americas, Queens Museum, New York in 2019.
Please notice: After the talk, at 4pm, Chico MacMurtrie will present his robotic work „Border Crosser“ in action at the Atrium of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Vordere Zollamtsstraße 7, 1030 Wien.