Unlike the common harsh and violent perspectives of technology in society and art, Mechanical Kaleidoscope reimagines machines as glowing and graceful.

Mechanical Kaleidoscope

2019

Projection through fabric, metal frame 

Mechanical Kaleidoscope is a video installation exploring the beauty of turning machines. Industrial artefacts swirl before the viewer's eye, tessellating in and out of clarity in an array of purple, yellow and pink. The work is projected on a soft fabric held up by a metal frame, swaying with the surrounding environment.

The accompanying catalogue essay notes the global supply chain of the materials used and the artwork reflects the modern disconnection from these sites of production in the machine functioning towards an unknown form. They turn for the sake of it in their dazed beauty.

Unlike the common harsh and violent perspectives of technology in society and art – such as the Futurists of the early twentieth century -  Mechanical Kaleidoscope reimagines machines as glowing and graceful. The artwork's undulating and intangible beauty call the viewer to reflect on the emotionality of technological change while also offering a more feminine and human aesthetic to the industrial revolution. 

Sound credit: Graham Bole​