Turkish artist, Server Demitras, uses painstaking engineering to bring machines to life. Rather than having robotic like motions, these machines are designed to move in a way that is far more human-like. The kinetic sculptures that Demirtas creates exist in a space that connects art and engineering.
The carefully choreographed movements that the machines perform work to question the human condition and what it is to be human. The works that Demirtas creates have not been made in order to perform a task as most robotics are but, rather, these machines are there to reflect on human consciousness and all that exists within the self.
The pieces are created by hand and they can take months to create and are made using mainly stainless steel, polyester, silicon, and a synthetic polymer. The sculptures are made without assistance from either engineers or software developers and great lengths are gone to by Dermitas in order to bring the works to life in the way that he envisioned them and this includes getting the sculptures to move in the exact way that he wants.
There is an exploration of the connection between man and machine but, also, the works explore ideas of movement and inertia.
“One can easily achieve competence in re-creating human actions mechanically but the difficulty is in using mechanics to relate to the emotions”. Server Demirtaş
What is the connection that movement has to our emotions and can this be mechanically recreated? The way that the artist has combined very human-like movements being performed by robotic looking sculptures has encourage the exploration of this question. Dermitas draws from “Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia” a book by French authors Deleuze and Guattari. The book looks at the connections between desire, reality and capitalist society.
The beauty of the sculptures and their movements ia an important part of what gives the works significance. When we look at these ‘robots’ we are not exploring ideas of production. What we are being confronted with is ideas of the self and the role that machines occupy within this space. This grand subject matter is succinctly encapsulated within a smooth marrying of engineering and design that the artist has managed through techniques that we hope we will be able to engage with in ongoing projects.
