The “Machine Project” that you are showing in Rijeka and Zagreb consists of two installations, the robots “Machine 5.0” and “Machine 6.0”. What is the main idea of the project?
The whole project is a bit weird because apart from the perfor-mance itself, it includes the performative aspect of the making of the heads. We have this special chair in which you sit down and fix your head to it with a clamp, like the ones used in workshops. You put this clamp on your head and it holds your face in place. In order to do that it has to be set in the perfectly right angle. And it hurts. This inspired the lines that the smaller robot is saying: “I’m sitting in this thing and I’m trying to be a machine.”
Thomas, could you explain the idea of your first work?
The first machine was exibited in 1996. It was a weird thing. The machine consisted just of my face stuttering, trying to say some-thing, in a sort of in-between stage of active speaking. On the other side there was a computer programme running. It generated chaotic lines, black and white formations in the style of Duchamp (for ex-ample when he made drawings by dropping a rope), 120 drawings a second. It was programmed so that the images it produced were somewhere between single lines and perceptually more homoge-nous drawings — a sort of figure integrated all the individual lines. The Stuttmachine was watching the stuttering screen. For me it was like two traditions meeting. The machine was more expressive and the computer was analytical — a visualisation of the phenomenon of stuttering. Coming from two different mythologies, they observed each other in a way. I thought that the computer part of it was boring and the machine was interesting. (laughs)
How did you start working together?
We met at a party and started to talk. I don’t remember exactly how, but we ended up with an idea of fusing this sort of work with music and doing something together. Then there was a rock festival somewhere in Sweden, in the middle of a forest. We brought a container and put our machine inside. After some people from the festival entered, we bolted the doors so they were locked inside. And then it started: through a huge PA system the machine was talking to audience. Some of the people just freaked out. At that point the machine only had a female face and voice. A number of men reacted to it sexualy, which was quite strange. We found that interesting and continued working together.
What was the second robot about?
It was about machine aesthetics, because the illusion that the machine produces is quite powerful. It was also a very political piece. We sampled great political speeches from Stalin to Hitler, Martin Luther King, Kennedy... all the rhetoric that they used. The machine performed this speech in club, so the point was about the relation of the machine to the crowd, about analysing power structures. There is also a schizophrenic aspect to it — I'm watching myself as a machine uttering all this ideology.
Why do you use robots as a means of expression?
The construction is very clear-cut: a mechanical body and a human head. Through that you can plug into the basics of our western civi-lisation, how we deal with our bodies and what language we use to conceptualise it. When the big machine was first shown, it was more like a sombre fin de siécle thing, but then everyone survived the millennium bug! (laughs)
What is the difference between the big and the small robot?
The big one is like an industrial machine. The small one we did in a psychotic state of mind. What I think is interesting about the piece is that it is almost like the Pink Panther cartoon: he is pink and the world around him is pink. There is no subject-object dichotomy, it all sort of floats. That is how I perceive this piece, because there is a projection on the body and in the background, and as much as it is a part of it, it is also separated. The 3D cinematic object is popping out from the screen, sharing your space. And you come to the words that it is saying, it’s like you’re stuck in that chair I mentioned and it’s squeezing your head. The piece is based on improvised facial expression. The robots are two different characters. This is a classical thing — you have it in Chinese puppet theatre, a thousand years old tradition — the big guy and the small fat one. In the silent movies from the beginning of the 20th century you have Laurel and Hardy. But this performance is not a theatre piece. The robots are not characters, so it's difficult for me to set them apart.
What do you think comes out of their interraction?
I don’t know, I am trying to figure that out. What do you think?
The small robot is more cynical, and the bigger one is serious and very convincing. He looks like he has something to say.
The small one is the sidekick. It’s like in Seinfield: you have Seinfield and you have George (laughs). He is the cynical one.
The big robot has hyper-realistic head and the pneumatic body. Did you intend to make robot more alike human?
It is made to be more industrial, a machine with a capital M. The body is a machine. The head is human in a way, so there’s a sort of split.
Did you ever want to develop a machine that would move its legs, walk?
Robotics is just a medium. I’m not in the least interested in robo-tics. It's just equipment, like a mini-disk. The stupid thing is that you can't go to the shop and buy it, you have to make it yourself, and that is time-consuming. This is more like a classical sculpture crafted with a different technology. It has a pedestal, and it stands there and talks. You could spend a year making it walk, but I don't realy see the point.
What is the importance of music in your projects?
Music, at least in our western culture, is about control. For example, there is a notion that a ballet dancer is a robot constructed to make certain movements. In the art world music is sort of taboo, because music is not a product of thought and as an artist you are supposed to think. I think it’s funny. Music has an impact, it does something to us. If someone played the wrong tune in the Aztec Indian ceremonies, they would chop his head off. Somehow, music always has to do with power and control. It’s a bit absurd, but the language we use starts with Elvis in a way, it is a by-product of the American cultural industry that has spread thorugh the whole world.
Do you think that your robots can control movements of people?
It is interesting that when the performance is over, people applaud and when they are doing that they look at the machines. But, we made the fucker, we are there too! For me that is interesting beca-use it changes how the audience perceives the whole thing, you see how easy it is to trick people.
What kind of society do your robots belong to?
To a society that has a lot of different control mechanisms, growing ever subtler and more difficult to recognise. You need to get realy paranoid to actually see all the power structures around us.