when the robots start to sing...

Upon encountering the aural landscape of Michael Waterman's Robochorus installation, one cannot help but consider the ontology of human creativity. Must all aesthetic experiences spring directly from the artist to be regarded and savoured as a means to discern the contents of their soul? More precisely, can the expressions of an artist be authentic when voiced by a third party? If one is to have faith in transubstantiation by means of pencil, musical instrument, or paint brush, surely there is space in the religious cannon to include machines, robots, and electronic devices.



Waterman's history as a purveyor of bricolage and recontextualization greatly informs his latest installation. The eight individual Robochorus "singers" are homebrew anthropomorphic robots manufactured from the consumer audio detritus of several decades. These sentinels are located throughout the gallery space and sit mute without viewer interaction. When their internal motion sensors are triggered, the figures self-illuminate and begin to emit one of eight harmonic pitches in response to external stimuli. It is with these sounds that Waterman's interest in collage is most evident. Each of the eight tones is comprised of numerous audio sources, including radio broadcasts and environmental audio, which combine into a single, polyvalent drone. As the eight robots are voiced in the harmonic series, when all of them are triggered they can be heard to sing in conversation with each other. Taken together, the robots form the latest in retro home entertainment made public.



Part of Waterman's intention is to demonstrate the influence of commerce on our appreciation of art. The artist seems to want to bring the latent ambiguities of modern electronics and consumption to the fore. By triggering the robots and making them come to life, the audience gains a degree of control over the electronics that Waterman has put into play. Normally, we walk through the valley of technology with blinders; the vast majority of the population has little or no operational understanding of the devices that are consumed. This lack of understanding when merged with late capitalism's mantra of planned obsolescence has resulted in our present-day throw-away economy, which interpellates us as contingent psychotics disregarding the apocalyptic damage we are doing to our biosphere while simultaneously feeding off our nostalgic instincts for the purity of our collective past. We live and breathe garbage on a habitual basis. With Robochorus, Waterman has restructured our forgotten machines from their original functions to a more primitive and abstract level to allow a greater degree of understanding and sympathy.

What was once the latest in high-fidelity audio equipment has here become recontextualized into the latest in post-human technologies. Our machines play on, long after they have become obsolete and forgotten (by extension - does art outlive our critical interest?). By situating the listener as principle agent within a continually changing aural geography, Waterman's robomorphic singers demonstrate the very human characteristic of wanting to be loved (or more precisely, wondering why their love is no longer being returned when once it was so freely given). Individually, their voices are polyphonic yet highly articulated. When heard en masse, the effect is of an unarticulated yet aurally rich cluster of voices, situating the listener as chief conductor.



Several critical responses quickly elicit themselves. Am I supposed to understand what these robots are telling me? Do they themselves understand, or are their utterances the robot equivalent of a nervous tick? While the installation might suggest movement and progression akin to a narrative, when examined in more detail the piece becomes much more abstract and schizophrenic as the individual sound sources become supra-liminal. In some circles this aesthetic is named microsound: audio, when listened to under the microscope as it were, reveals increasing amounts of information. It is the impossibility to properly locate sounds that gives Robochorus its semantic resilience. Robochorus wishes to engage at both the macroscopic and the microscopic level, and yet this very process of "straining to hear" brings the listener back full-circle, (sitting "alone") in a darkened room, illuminated by the robotic extensions of humanity. The point, dear listener, is yourself, listening.

Michael Waterman's Robochorus runs from May 5 until July 9 at the Hamilton Artists Inc.

here we go again, or: how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

MP3: Sun Ra Arkestra - Nuclear War

There has been quite a lot of talk about Iran in the North American media these days. We hear many things: that they are bellicose fundamentalists intent on destroying the west; that they have nuclear ambitions which threaten every nation on earth; that they harbour terrorists and train them for future activities. The new mantra down south seems to be one of preemption, a get 'em before they get us attitude.

It might seem dreadfully obvious, but such talk in the media would likely convey to Iran an idea that the only way to defend itself against American aggression would be a strong nuclear arsenal. You really do have to love catch-22 situations, especially in regard to lobbing nukes around. The seeming inevitability of the situation evokes an almost religious fatalism, and that is precisely what hardline American and Iranian officials are exploiting in their separate camps. According to an article published in the New Yorker, President Bush is absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb" if it is not stopped, and that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do ... saving Iran is going to be his legacy." Since it is highly unlikely that George Bush was actually elected in either 2000 or 2004, this statement is perhaps the most disturbing bit of information ever to emerge from the White House.

The U.N. Security Council is also concerned with Iran, as it is concerned with any member nation which seems to be pursuing nuclear ambitions (except the US of course, which has had free reign to develop weapons of mass destruction; will we one day see America sanctioned for its militarism?). President Bush has repeatedly stated that his administration is pursuing every diplomatic means at its disposal (importantly, the CIA describes this as "inaccurate", but doesn't elaborate). It should here be noted that currently the US military is staging a continual series of military training exercises - such as strategic nuclear bombing simulations - within arms' reach of Iran. Of course, then there's that grand military exercise which is the occupation of Iraq.

Interestingly enough, Iraq seems as a quasi-ironic precursor to a more open form of regime change, ie nuclear war. Talk about Saddam Hussein and his government has adequately diluted the debate surrounding American involvement in the Middle East. No longer is the Palestinian-Israeli issue at the forefront; similarly pushed aside is the influence of American foreign policy on Lebanon and Syria, among others. We now have the great and secret show which is the trial of Saddam Hussein to occupy the foreign correspondent sections of our newshours and RSS feeds. What we are in fact getting is the classic bluff-and-swap manoeuvre. The White House is not filled with idiots, despite the child-king who is their leader. It was known for a long time that Hussein posed little threat to world peace. After all, it was America which sold Iraq much of its military arsenal. It seems much more likely that Iraq was invaded to secure a large oil deposit while simultaneously granting a second strategic foothold (after Israel) in the Middle East.



Seymore Hersh stated that in conversation with several high-ranking civilian staffers at the Pentagon, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was repeatedly described as "the next Adolph Hitler". Here's the switch after the bluff. Public debate concerning tyrants and monsters such as Hussein and Hitler, when breathed in the same utterance as Ahmadinejad, serves the purpose of rhetorical contingency that most listeners find captivating. Of course Ahmadinejad is bad, the public will say, lacking all proof to that effect other than I don't like Hitler.

According to several Pentagon-affiliated sources, America is quite advanced in the planning stages for military operations in Iran. We should not assume this operation to be as 'bloodless' as Iraq (to the 50,000 dead Iraqis, please pardon the use of this term). After all, after wiping out Iraq's army in 1991, military strategists knew full well the extent of Iraq's military capacity - none. In regard to Iran, the question is a lot more open. Iran does indeed have a standing army which is decently equipped. As well, there can be no denying that Iran has the potential for nuclear deployment.

In light of this, Pentagon strategists have come up with an all-or-nothing solution. Conventional and chemical weapons, such as those currently in use in Iraq, will not be able to decisively annihilate Iran's geographically dispersed nuclear processing facilities, nor will they be able to penetrate Iran's purported underground uranium enrichment facilities. Some estimates posit that more than five hundred distinct sites would have to be rapidly destroyed to ensure Iran's submission to American nuclear authority. Consequently, only the nuclear option remains to ensure that Iran doesn't respond to a military strike with a nuclear counter-attack.

In light of this might we surmise about a statement in the Project for a New American Century - that wonderful and terrifying in situ holocost museum - released a little more than a week after the 9/11 attacks. To ensure American hegemony over key material resources, namely oil, water, and uranium, and continue the war on terrorism, the country would have to escalate warfare considerably. Winning the war on terrorism would likely "require the United States to engage a well-armed foe". Just to remind you, the signatories and principal architects of PNAC are currently members of George W. Bush's administration.

Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy is quoted in the New Yorker as saying that "we have to be ready to deal with Iran if the crisis escalates....This is not like planning to invade Quebec." So the waters of an invasion into Iran don't get diluted by another bluff-and-switch potential, I'll leave that last somewhat ominous Freudian slip for a future article.