Alan Rath in Sculpture

www.alanrath.org/DVSculptures/WhenIsNow.html

Jessie: Alan Rath is an American artist who creates robotic and digital video sculptures. Although he holds a degree in electrical engineering he is pretty much self taught when it comes to art. His work caught my eye in the September issue of Sculpture magazine, and I found in the article that followed that Rath has some interesting views on technology. His work often mimics human behaviour, whether it be staring off into space or moving to a beat of our own (as mp3 users tend to do), and he finds that people are often intimidated and confused by the works. He says "Some people are clearly mystified as to why I would go to all that trouble to create something so useless. They want to know, 'But what does it do?'. The fact that it is active rather than passively sitting there might make you feel that it should be doing something useful - actively choosing to do nothing does create anxiety for some people."
A lot of his works feature small LCD screens showing human eyes looking back at you and winking. Some have been programmed to respond to viewers as they approach, so as well as you looking at the art, the art can look back at you. They eyes give the objects personality, and we instantly identify with them because they are human, but I find the work quite creepy to look at. The work also references the modern museum environment (modern life in general?) where we are constantly being watched and all our moves are tightly controlled.

webs.wichita.edu/.../show/?NID=5154&AID=10031

Out of time but checkout www.alanrath.org, for more including some videos of pieces in action.