Tender Machines

The three sculptures that make up Tender Machines are constructed from mild steel rod, shaped into loosely anthropomorphic armatures — not bodies exactly, but forms with something like a spine, a reach, a tendency to incline. Each is driven by twelve servo motors controlled by an ultrasonic sensor array that continuously reads the position and velocity of nearby visitors. The movement vocabulary was developed over three months in collaboration with a choreographer: bow, extend, recoil, hover, turn away.

The work began as a question about what care looks like when it is mechanical and rule-bound — whether a form that responds reliably to your approach, that adjusts its posture toward you, constitutes something like attentiveness. Visitors frequently report anthropomorphising the sculptures within seconds, then becoming self-conscious about having done so, then doing it again. This oscillation — between rational distance and affective response — is the primary material of the piece.

Tender Machines premiered at steirischer herbst ‘23 in Graz and subsequently toured to the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and the MUDAM in Luxembourg. The software controlling the movement vocabulary is published under an open license on GitHub.