The 10 students were each paired with an artist (in one case, a collective of two artists), interviewing them about their work and helping as an assistant when needed. If art is having a séance over experimental music at Merrill House, then what is a painting? What is a sculpture? It requires you to shift your categories.” “We were really focused on the things that might not seem at first to be art, that don’t fit people’s regular criteria. “This thing we call art occupies an impossibly wide spectrum,” Godfrey emphasized. The class looked at historical studies, discussing how art has evolved over time, and used Machine Project as a case study - talking about how it fits. That’s what Machine Project is - they push the boundaries on where the definition of art is and what falls in and outside of that category.” “ to put a definition on something that’s completely undefinable. “We started with talking about what art is,” explained Ally Shahidi ’19.

Photo by Zoe Zhong ’17Ī first-year seminar called Art in Community, taught by Godfrey, was organized around Machine Project’s visit. It’s like a concert hall in a particular season.”Ĭomputing with the dead: In an homage to John Vincent Atanasoff, the inventor of the digital computer who was born in Hamilton, N.Y., Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain spun an electromechanical installation using music and light. There was something for everyone, said Godfrey. You want transitions that are logical, but then you want real diverse ways of interacting.” “You think about how one project moves into the next. “It’s like making a mixed tape,” Allen said. Allen invited artists whose work could be done outside of a studio and who he thought would connect with different audiences. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Artists in Residence program.Īlmost all of the projects were tailored specifically for Hamilton and Colgate.

Machine Project was supported by the Christian A. “It seemed to me that it would be an engaged public art happening that would be valuable for Colgate and our students, as a way of taking art out of the gallery into the community, to see how art works in that context.” This fall, the timing was right, and Godfrey’s department colleague Professor Lynn Schwarzer agreed to be a coordinator. “I was really taken by his description of what he was doing with Machine Project,” Godfrey recalled. Godfrey met Allen almost 10 years ago, through a program at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas.

“Artists use the relationships between people or within communities as a kind of material - not just a setting, but actually how people interact with each other and what that says about who we are.” “Machine Project is part of a larger genre, which is sometimes called social practice,” said art and art history professor DeWitt Godfrey, who invited the group to Colgate. Its troupe has traveled the world, performing in various combinations and sites, but this fall was the organization’s first collaboration with a whole town.Įvents ranged from interpretive dance, to protest songs, to intuition workshops. Machine Project is a Los Angeles–based organization “that works with artists to develop new projects often involving performance or participation with the public,” explained founder Mark Allen. Together with the Colgate and Hamilton communities, these artists conducted experiments that facilitated discussions and posed philosophical questions, including: What is art? Kallmyer was one of 11 artists in residence during the two-month-long Perfect Strangers: Machine Project and the Hamiltonians. Lastly, rakes that were rigged with microphones produced a melodic soundtrack synthesized by the event’s orchestrator: artist Chris Kallmyer. Then, leaf blowers provided a drone effect. The only sounds in the first act were leaves swishing, geese honking overhead, and cars driving by on Broad Street.

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