In and out of the Body and into the Machine
with Chico MacMurtrie
Artist, New York
Presented in collaboration with the Berkeley Arts and Design initiative as part of A+D Mondays @ BAMPFA
Chico MacMurtrie’s work pushes the boundaries between robotic sculpture, new media installation, and performance. Immersed in the Bay Area’s Art and Technology Counterculture of the 1990s, he became known for his anthropomorphic, computer-controlled sculptures which evolved over the years into a “Society of Machines”. Today, operating out of his studio in Brooklyn, New York, also known as the “Robotic Church”, MacMurtrie is internationally recognized for his “Inflatable Architectural Bodies” series which explores the underlying essence of movement and transformation in organic and non-organic bodies. Freestanding or suspended in mid-air, these more recent servo-pneumatic “soft-machines”, inflate and deflate through an articulated series of movements, depicting imaginary molecular and cellular formations on a magnified scale.
MacMurtrie is currently working on the “Border Crossers”, a series of inflatable robotic sculptures, which are designed to rise several stories high and arch over the U.S.-Mexico border and other borders around the world. Their choreographed performance would originate on both sides of the border and stage a symbolic gesture of unity and peace.
About Chico MacMurtrie
Chico MacMurtrie and Amorphic Robot Works, an interdisciplinary collective he founded in 1991, are recognized for their monumental robotic sculptures and performative installations. They 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 del’Industrie, Paris; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (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.
For more information please visit: Amorphicrobotworks.org
About the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium
Founded by Prof. Ken Goldberg in 1997, the ATC lecture series is an internationally respected forum for creative ideas. Always free of charge and open to the public, the series is coordinated by the Berkeley Center for New Media and has presented over 200 leading artists, writers, and critical thinkers who question assumptions and push boundaries at the forefront of art, technology, and culture including: Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Sophie Calle, Bruno Latour, Maya Lin, Doug Aitken, Pierre Huyghe, Miranda July, Billy Kluver, David Byrne, Gary Hill, and Charles Ray.
Fall 2018 – Spring 2019: Fact & Fiction
What do we make now of this classic opposition? For centuries, artists and critics have placed pressure on both of these terms, often asking us to question how to separate truth from lies, the real from the artificial, and fact from fiction. Addressing a range of political contexts and utilizing an array of creative forms, speakers in this series offer new approaches to these age-old questions.
The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium is presented in conjunction with Arts + Design Mondays at BAMPFA.
Monday Evenings, 6:30-8:00pm
Osher Theater, BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/visit/getting-here
Seating free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted
2018
09/10 Roxane Gay: With One N
Roxane Gay, Author, Indiana
Registration required via Eventbrite.
10/08 The Networked Avant-Garde
Kelani Nichole, Director The Current, New York
In partnership with the Wiesenfeld Visiting Artist Lecture Series
10/15 Image and Amnesia
Kerry Tribe, Artist, LA, CA
In partnership with the Wiesenfeld Visiting Artist Lecture Series
10/29 The Good Anthropocene: Terraforming Earth
Kim Stanley Robinson, Author, Davis, CA
In partnership with the Department of Architecture's Studio One
11/19 Daemons Tools Art Tech
Marisa Morán Jahn, Artist, Cambridge, MA
2019
02/11 News of the Future and the Future of News
Kevin Delaney, Editor, Quartz
In partnership with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
02/25 In and out of the Body and into the Machine
Chico Macmurtrie, Artist, New York
03/04 A Conversation with Nnedi Okorafor
Nnedi Okorafor, Artist, Olympia Fields, IL
In partnership with the Department of Architecture's Studio One,
the Department of African American Studies,
and the Department of English
03/18 On Digital Colonialism and 'Other' Futures
Morehshin Allahyari, Artist, New York
In partnership with the Wiesenfeld Visiting Artist Lecture Series
and the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation
and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies
and Stanford University
Registration required via Eventbrite.
04/01 A Body Without Borders
Rhonda Holberton, Artist, Oakland
In partnership with the Wiesenfeld Visiting Artist Lecture Series
04/29 Places in Space
Adam Savage, Mythbusters, SF
In partnership with the Department of Architecture's Studio One
Registration required via Eventbrite.
For updated information, maps, please see:
Contact: info.bcnm [at] berkeley.edu, 510-495-3505
ATC Director: Ken Goldberg
BCNM Director: Nicholas de Monchaux
Arts + Design Director: Shannon Jackson
BCNM Liaisons: Lara Wolfe, Laurie Macfee
ATC Home Page (list of speakers, directions, mailing list):
ATC Highlight Video from F10-S11 Season (2 mins)
http://j.mp/atc-highlights-hd
ATC Audio-Video Archive on Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive:
http://tinyurl.com/atc-internet-archive
ATC on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/cal-atc
ATC on Twitter:
https://www.twitter.com/cal_atc
Arts + Design Mondays @ BAMPFA is organized and sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Arts + Design Initiative. The series is co curated by Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium at the Berkeley Center for New Media; Department of Art Practice; Graduate School of Journalism; Townsend Center for the Humanities; The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, and in collaboration with the Headlands Center for the Arts; Fort Mason Center/COAL + ICE; CIEE; Art21; and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
The 2018-19 series of Arts + Design Mondays is made possible thanks to a generous donation from Jacqueline Jackson and other supporters of Berkeley Arts + Design.