Norm the Artist, Oughtist, and Ne'er-do-well

Here are my central art-beliefs:

1. Art should concern itself as much with behavior as it does with appearance.

2. Some of the best art happens when behavior and appearance are completely at odds with each other.

3. Economy of means is a critical part of aesthetics.

4. Art functions best, and is most needed, outside of galleries and museums.

Curriculum vitae

Short Autobiography and Credo

Here's some of the stuff I've done over the years (Click on the thumbnail for a bigger picture):

• First Tighten Up on the Drums (1969). My first major electronic project, built specifically for the 1969 E.A.T. group exhibition entitled "Some More Beginnings", in New York City. Using several hundred early-vintage digital integrated circuits donated by the Sprague Electric Company, I set about creating a machine which would autonomously generate shimmering light patterns similar to those seen at the bottoms of swimming pools. Much of the ten months spent making the machine involved teaching myself electronics. When it was finally done, the patterns generated turned out to be more reminiscent of clouds swirling past an airplane porthole, or rain dripping down a window-pane. Looking back now, I realize it is an early Cellular Automata experiment. Materials: Plexiglas, custom electronics, and small neon bulbs. Owned by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
  First Tighten Up on the Drums
  

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• Dervish (1974). A sound installation wherein modulated white noise seems to rotate around a central observer within a circular array of ceiling-mounted speakers. The movement alternatively speeds up, slows down, and reverses, while an audio filter correspondingly shifts the timbre of the noise. The impetus for building the piece was a budding interest in the simulation of motion using regularly-spaced, static sources. In this case, my interest spilled over from light into sound. Materials: Plexiglas, public address speakers, and custom electronics. Owned by the National Gallery of Canada.
  Dervish (detail of controller)
  

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• Menage (1974). An Electric Gallery (Toronto) installation consisting of four robots crawling back and forth along separate ceiling tracks, and a fifth floor-situated robot. Each machine has a rotating antenna-like scanner, designed to point itself toward any strong light-source, and a spotlight mounted at the center of its scanner. Ceiling robots therefore tend to lock into each others' gazes until their non-responsive track-motors pull them apart. Given the simplicity of the control principles, the group behavior is surprisingly complex.
  Built in homage to W. Grey Walter, an early pioneer in brain research and the artificial modelling of organic behavior. Materials: Plexiglas, stepping motors, and custom electronics. Owned by myself.
  Menage
  

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• Four-Letter Word Generator (1974). This work harkens back conceptually to my 1966 random-number generator, with 4-letter words replacing the single digit readout. Although technically more sophisticated, it is strategically less complex, depending simply upon a few out-of-sync oscillators for its choice of the next word. All the words chosen are pronounceable, although not of any particular language. Materials: Plexiglas, neon alphanumeric readout tubes, and custom electronics.
  Four-Letter Word Generator
  

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• Let Fly (a.k.a. So Far So Good) (1974). A small table-top work. Tiny booms with strobing light-emitting diodes at their ends move in stochastic sequence and direction. Materials: Plexiglas, light-emitting diodes, motors, and custom electronics. Owned by Art Bank/ the Canada Council, Ottawa.
  Let Fly
  

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• Splish Splash Two (1975). A large (8 ft.x 40 ft.) logic/light mural commisioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for the foyer of its Vancouver offices. The mural simulates raindrops falling randomnly on the surface of a quiet pond. Materials: aluminum, polycarbonate plastic, incandescent bulbs, and custom electronics. Owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Vancouver, B.C.
  Splish Splash Two
  

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• Facing Out Laying Low (1977). A microcomputer-controlled, interactive robot. It surveys its surroundings from a fixed point, and responds to activity it finds "interesting" with a variety of audio responses (the first version employed coded brownian trills, while later versions used synthesized voice). It has gone through six major hardware/software revisions, the most recent being a complete hardware/software re-build after the original work went missing. Materials: Plexiglas, motors, custom electronics. Owned by myself. If you'd like to see the program (in Motorola 6800 Assembler) which gave the original F.O.L.L. its particular behaviour, click here.
  
  Facing Out Laying Low
  

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• Departure (1977). A moving re-enactment of the famous Michaelangelo painting. The viewer puts pennies into a slot, whereupon black curtains open revealing Adam's arm resting on a lush field of Viridian green. A light goes on offstage right, and Adam's arm reaches up toward it. Then God's arm swings down and **ZAP** , a 1 cm. spark jumps from finger tip to finger tip!! Finally a light goes on offstage left as the curtains close. All for seven cents. Materials: wood, oil-paint, motors, textiles, custom electronics. Owned by Medtronic, an artificial pacemaker manufacturing company in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
  Departure (detail)
  
  

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• Final Approach (1979). A sound installation involving a grid of nine ceiling-mounted speakers continuously rotating at the ends of synchronized booms. My intent here was to explore a hybrid system using both real, and virtually-moving, sound. Only one speaker is active at a given time. Sound switches between speakers only when they are in close proximity, and a randomizing circuit gives the go-ahead. The result is the sound of a fly, or an airplane, buzzing overhead in complex arabesques. Materials: aluminum, motors, public- address speakers, electronics. Owned by myself, but now so cannabalized as to require rebuilding.
  Final Approach
  

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• Funky Isn't Junky (1982). An installation of five or six crude sound-producing machines synchronized by a "conductor" machine. As a reaction to ten years of intense personal involvement with electronic hi-tech, I built the work almost entirely with pre-40's technology. At the end of the sequence, the piece appears to break down, dramatizing my love for the vulnerability of machine-kind. Materials: wood, motors, steel, plexiglas, aluminum, speaker, custom electronics. Owned by myself.
  Funky Isn't Junky (detail)
  

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• Funny Weather (1983). An artificial weather-system comprised of a number of fans of different shapes and sizes which are each turned on and off in response to drafts created by the other fans. Created site-specifically for the store-front window of a small artist-run gallery ("Eye Revue") in Toronto. Materials: aluminum, electric fans, relays. No longer in exsitence.
   Funny Weather (detail)
  

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• Hearsay (1985). A telecommunications event based upon the children's game whereby a secret message is whispered from person to person till it arrives back at its originator. In this case a message was sent around the world in 24 hours, roughly following the sun, via a global computer network (I. P. Sharp Associates). Each of the eight participating centres was charged with translating the message into a different language before sending it on. The whole process was monitored at Toronto's A-Space. You can examine the text file compilation of the results by clicking here.
  Hearsay (detail of A-Space installation)
  

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• Telephonic Arm Wrestling (1986). A collaborative telecommunications project undertaken by myself and fellow artist, Doug Back. The idea was to allow contestants in two different cities to arm-wrestle, using motorized force-transmitting systems interconnected by a telephone data link. First succcessfully exhibited during a 1986 link-up between the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, and the Artculture Resource Centre, Toronto. Sponsored by the McLuhan Programme, University of Toronto. Materials: Steel, Plexiglas, torque wrenches, motors, and custom electronics. Owned by Doug Back and myself.
  Telephonic Arm Wrestling (shown here with technician, Ian McGuigan)
  

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• The Helpless Robot (1987-96). Another interactive work, except that this one has no motors, but instead must depend upon its synthesized voice to encourage people to move it as it would "like". I built it primarily as an apparatus to test out different techniques of automatic knowledge-building; in this case, the machine attempts to assess and predict human behavior. Like Facing Out Laying Low, it is essentially an unfinishable work. Materials: plywood, angle-iron, proximity sensors, modified 80386 computer, and custom electronics. Click here for the original technical details on both hardware and software (its brain is now being updated using more compact and robust microprocessors). It also speaks Spanish and French. Owned by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingson, Ontario.
  The Helpless Robot
  

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• Them Fuckin' Robots (1988) . Fellow artist Laura Kikauka and I each built an electro-mechanical sex machine (hers, female; mine, male) without consulting each other on the particulars, apart from the dimensions of the engaging organs. We then brought these two machines together for a public performance. The male machine, the first and last anthropomorphic robot I've ever built, responds to the magnetic fields generated by the female organ, thereby increasing its rate of breathing and moving its limbs, simultaneously charging a capacitor to strobing "orgasm". The female machine, on the other hand, is a diverse assemblage including a boiling kettle, a squirting oil pump, a twitching sewing machine treadle, and huge solenoid on a fur-covered board -- all hanging from an old bedspring and energized by an electronic power sequencer. Materials: various found objects, aluminum, steel, motors, springs, solenoids, and custom electronics. Owned by The Funny Farm (Laura Kikauka) and myself.