Something is different in the Hood Museum. Where there once was silence sweeping through the galleries, there is now a constant, mesmerizing repetition of clinking metal, not to mention giggles of pleasure and gasps of amazement.
These enticing sounds are emanating from the Hood's newest exhibition, "Thoughtful Mechanisms: The Lyrical Engineering of Arthur Ganson."
Ganson is known for his playful mechanical sculptures, whose fully functional and often interactive parts excite audiences of all ages. Ganson, an artist-engineer, forges scientific principles and his unique imagination into an art form that forces museum visitors to look at machinery and the world in ways they never have before.
Take the exhibit's opening work, "Cory's Yellow Chair." The premise for the work is based on the idea of a slowly exploding chair. Six mechanical arms rotate six separate pieces of the chair away from the center of a starburst-like shape. Each arm rotates around its own axis, pulling the chair apart and then back together again as the arms rotate back toward the center of the starburst.
The movement of the arms is extremely graceful and the "explosion" of the chair is amazingly smooth. The chair is captured in its entirety for about one second before the cycle begins again, mimicking the impermanence of the moment.
The precise and subtle movements of Ganson's machines captivate visitors. They are machines, yet they go far beyond their common associations. Ganson is interested in creating machines whose gestures suggest an idea derived from his imagination. The experience is meant to be different for each visitor.
"The exhibit seems to appeal to a wide variety of people. It evokes something very different from every person," Hood Curator of Exhibitions Evelyn Marcus said.
Ganson, an artist-in-residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, dreams up his ideas from everyday life and explores ways in which to convey his visions in the form of kinetic sculpture, 16 of which appear in the Hood.
With no formal training in either engineering or mechanics, Ganson perfected his craft on his own throughout his career. Ganson's intuitive knack for mechanics allows him to explore techniques and to build contraptions first based on his imagination but also dictated by the inescapable laws of physics.
"[Ganson] starts with a pure idea, and his task is making that idea into a physical being and then into the viewers' minds. It is like a full circle," Marcus said.
The creation process is threefold. Ganson first envisions an idea that he hopes to relate through his art. Next, he designs the machine, hoping to capture the essence of his original idea.
Finally, he builds. Ganson constructs most of his parts from scratch, designing the wickets, sprockets, and cranks to suit his artwork perfectly. There is nothing in excess; every part serves an important and irreplaceable role.
Ganson's machines give new meaning to mechanics. Whereas most machines are characterized by their efficiency and programmed movements, Ganson's are imbued with a spirit all their own. The machines acquire a human quality in their gestures and perform so delicately that they contradict the classic notions of machines as clunky and utilitarian.
Ganson has said he feels like a choreographer when designing his pieces, focusing on the subtleties and clarity of the movements of his work. He is also very interested in contrasts and juxtapositions. This is readily apparent in all his work, which often places the organic and inorganic side by side.
In "Machine with Wishbone," Ganson has designed a machine that makes a chicken wishbone plod like a pair of human legs. The battery-operated machine is placed in contrast to the bone, which makes eerily human-like movements as it walks from one end of a platform to the other.
What is it exactly that lures the viewer into Ganson's world? Why are Ganson's machines so intriguing? It seems that Ganson has a very active, playful imagination. His machines look fun and are highly entertaining.
"They are deeper than just clever. There is a lot of wit to them. He daydreams and that is what none of us can fathom. It's in his mind," Marcus said.
At the same time though, Ganson's wit is coupled with his ability to translate his ideas into reality. It's necessary that his machines retain the basic elements of his original idea. They are meant to be the physical embodiment of an idea.
The engineering that serves as the foundation for Ganson's work is an integral aspect of the artwork itself. He makes a point of featuring the mechanics behind his work, to allow the audience to see for itself how the machines function. He wants the audience to make its own judgements about the machines and to draw its own understanding of their meaning.
"You are able to get up and explore the gears and how they work for yourself," Hood Public Relations Coordinator Sharon Reed said.
The realization of Ganson's ideas in their engineered forms requires a complex chain of mechanisms. He doesn't try to intentionally mask the workings of his machines. He hopes that audiences will examine the machines, trying to discover for themselves how they work. And in many cases, Ganson urges the audience to literally make the machines work by turning cranks.
"There is a hands-on component in the cranks. In that sense, the exhibit reaches people on an emotional and a physical level," Marcus said.
For example, a piece entitled "Machine with Black-Eyed Peas" functions only through the winding of a crank. The piece consists of an open wooden box filled with black-eyed peas. As one turns the crank, the exposed coils rotate and cause the peas inside to move slightly, each in its own way. The effect is a mass of slithering peas, whose black "eyes" emphasize the peas' slug-like movement.
One intriguing aspect of "Thoughtful Mechanisms" is that one can never return to the same exhibit twice. Unlike exhibitions featuring still artwork, Ganson's machines are in constant movement.
In "Margot's Other Cat," a miniature armchair dances, tumbles, and flies through the air above a miniature toy cat. The chair's magical dance around the cat is seemingly in slow motion, but the movements are not automated. It is impossible to predict how high the chair will bounce and how long it will remain airborne.
"One of the charms about all of the machines is that they produce the unexpected," Reed said.
The reason for the appeal of Ganson's machines is hard to put into words. They're unlike anything audiences have ever seen. He has broken through a stigma of museum art as being far removed from the public. Visitors can go to this exhibit and turn the cranks themselves.
Ganson draws visitors in with the promise of interactivity and captivation. And an entirely new way of looking at machines.
