As Yet Untitled - 1992-1995
Installation
Puma 550 industrial robot, found family snap shots, conveyor, shredder, metal, electronics
Installation: 60” x 144” x 120”
Collection: artist (add to cART), Art Gallery of Ontario
Edition of 3
As Yet Untitled is an interactive work that offers the viewer the opportunity to determine the fate of found family photographs. The centrally located industrial robot is programmed to pick up a photograph, present it to the viewer, and wait a given period of time for a response. Each photograph is displayed sequentially to the viewer, framed by cut-out silhouettes of hands, in which are embedded light-sensitive switches that control the destiny of the photographs presented. If one or both hands are covered by the participant, the robotic arm carefully deposits the photograph into an archival box located on the left of the viewer.
If no one covers a cut-out hand silhouette, the robotic arm lowers the photograph into a paper shredder at the base of the robot, directly in front of the viewer. The shredded remains of the photograph then drop onto a conveyor belt, that carries the fragments away from the viewer, to a pile behind the robot. The robot is programmed to run continuously. In the absence of viewers, or on occasions of the participant's decision to not stop the process, the photographs will be fed into the shredder.