Petit Mal
Brass, Bronze, Aluminum, Stainless Steel, Cold-Cathode Numeric Display Tube, Electronics
18” x 7” x 7”
Petit Mal is a medical term referring to a neurological condition that causes brief losses of awareness, also known as absence seizures. I have adapted the syndrome to a small robot.
This piece is a variation on Electric Motor Man, one of my early walking studies. His head has been replaced by a cold-cathode numerical indicator (aka “Nixie”) tube that counts each step as the figure walks. Periodically the automaton halts midstride as the numerals in his head flash haphazardly, a sort of mechanical seizure, until he recovers his orderly walking and counting.
I am intrigued by the idea that a robot might suffer some of the same maladies as we humans. I seem to be attached to the tragi-comical notion that our inventions, while emerging from human brilliance and goodness, must also reveal or endow some measure of human pathology.
Video
Machine Clock