Machines that Almost Fall Over

source: vimeo

A system of sculptures that is constantly on the brink of collapse. My intention was to capture and sustain the exact moment of impending catastrophe and endlessly repeat it.
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source: mkontopoulos

Michael Kontopoulos is an artist, designer and storyteller working at the intersection of interactive media and conceptual art. His ongoing studio work draws heavily on themes and strategies in Science Fiction literature and typically explores the creation of fictitious characters, systems or machines. By exploring sculptural prototypes through short films and photographs, his work questions what conditions of social want or need could drive people to invent objects that critique or subvert the status quo rather than affirm it.Michael has exhibited solo and collaborative projects in galleries, festivals and conferences in the U.S., Asia and Europe, including the Santa Monica GLOW Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the TED conference, LACE Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. He was the winner of a 2010 Rhizome Commission for Emerging Artists, sponsored by the New Museum of New York. Currently, he teaches programming, electronics and sculpture courses at Art Center College of Design, UCLA, California State University, Long Beach and the University of Southern California. He holds a BFA in Fine Art from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA in Design and Media Arts from UCLA.
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source: mkontopoulos

I have always approached art as a wayward anthropologist; One who is constantly involved in a process of participant observation in the everyday world. Though an artist, I frequently assume the stance of a historian of the everyday or archivist of the not-yet-transpired –– from esoteric, solitary gestures to complex but common social entanglements. I am interested
in stories that custom-built objects, tools and electronic devices can reveal about the people who make and use them, or the world they employ them in. The deployment of an tool or machine
represents a response to a specific need. But what happens when no device exists to address one’s needs? The underlying assumption in most of my work is that in such a case, a person will
exercise agency and invent their own. As an artist, I both invent and tell the story of that person.
When ideating, I draw heavily on tropes and strategies in science fiction as well as in modern cosmology. Notably, I am influenced by the idea of a-temporality or, at least, of possible
transgressions of temporality; Suggestions of a potential future, or glimpses at an alternative present. A less inhibited term for science fiction is “speculative fiction” because more often than
not, a propositional reality is an excellent vehicle by which to critique elements of our living, codified reality. The term is credited to author Robert Heinlein who used it to describe the world
not as it is, but as it could be. I aspire to similar ends, but through the invention and documentation of objects and rituals. Some refer to this process as Critical Design or Design
Fiction. I prefer Speculative Design. I think of this methodology as a type of object-oriented psychoanalysis, wherein the constructing of objects and the invention of their context is a way of
exploring both intra-human obsessions or anxieties and inter-human social politics.
With my artwork, I am attempting to operate at the intersection of speculative fiction, mechanical design, “do it yourself” culture, hacking and garage science. There are certain topics
and dualities that attract me and appear frequently in my work: past and future, comfort and discomfort, attention and distraction, the sacred and the profane, to name a few. My interests are
diverse but my methodology is consistent. I almost always begin with a period of research, writing and study in an attempt to define a conceptual problem worth investigating. Through a
highly iterative process, I then move into designing and building diegetic prototypes. I try to create objects that look and feel grounded in reality as we know it, but are only slightly uncanny.
To do this, I often work with familiar materials like wood and plastic but enjoy mixing in new rapid-prototyping methods such as 3D printing in order to make previously unrealizable forms.
With every work, I am searching for a critical space in between the familiar and the propositional. The imaginative spark occurs, for me, in between seeing an object and imagining
yourself (as a viewer) using it.
In an exhibition context, I typically display objects alongside videos that feature them. They can range from experimental vignettes to actual narratives. In the end, my goal is to
imagine (and call into question) the circumstances under which that object was made or already existed. Who made it or used it and for what reason? Under what conditions of social want? I try
to encourage viewers to ask these questions through the work I present, by blending the narrative and the mimetic; showing and telling.