MAN MADE MACHINES

Granjon’s roots as an artist began in video and are thus grounded in the realm of digital and electronic technology. Technology is also now his subject. His series of short videos 2 Minutes of Experi-mentation and Entertainment (1996--1998) holds playful mirrors up to both technological innovation and the ways in which it is pre-sented in the public domain. Both commentator and inventor, Granjon introduces in this series a set of humorous and impossible inventions: a hamburger duplicator that proposes to digitally ana-lyse and reproduce cheeseburgers via a computer and microwave oven; shitBot (1997), a radio-driven vehicle that vaporises dog shit and an anti-gravitational vehicle for cats. Like science fiction, Granjon’s object is to exceed reality and he manipulates the fictive qualities of video to support this aim. Special effects and video editing create a veracity that is undermined by the spoof-like unreality of the machines. But the video series marks a transition in his work. While some machines rely on special effects others — such as the Cybernetic Parrot Sausage (1996) — are fully operational. What is interesting about these documentaries — that detail, almost pornographically, the inception and construction of his machines — is that an over-arching narrative of creation emerges. Video techniques and hilarious fictional machines give way to ma-chines that now operate in real time, emerging from their half-life as movie props to become fully-functioning computer-driven entities that accompany Granjon in his live performances. Like the videos, Granjon’s recent performances are “presentations” of inventions. A heightened tension builds up as Granjon preps his robots in front of the audience and explains the procedures he follows. Setbacks and contre-temps are incorporated into the act. In The Z Lab Presents (1999), Granjon sings with one of his creations in La Chanson du Toutou. Toutou is a robot dog who barks in time to the music, moving back and forth on a track. This is a performance that explores and exposes the mythology of the inventor (and artist) in real time. In contrast to the sometimes frustrating “realism” of Granjon’s per-formances stands the Z lab, a quasi-mythical structure that he posits as a kind of “corporate headquarters” for enquiry into natural phe-nomenon and the production of animated objects. Working, as it does, with technological concepts that range from artificial intelli-gence to anti-gravitation and cybernetics, the Z lab mirrors and lampoons “serious and mysterious” scientific research organisations and their potentially threatening research and development pro-grammes. The Z lab is a playful bid for scientific authenticity. This playfulness is particularly evident when considering the occasionally monstrous and toy-like creations that are its chief out-put, and the tools that are used to make them. Because, like a double entendre, the Z lab as a centre of technological research is remarkable for its anachronisms. Unlike other artistic organisations that appropriate cutting edge tools of technology to create art, the matrix of the Z lab is the laughably out of date Acorn BBC microcomputer model B. A discarded techno-logical item with the programming power of an average toaster (the Acorn uses a Motorola 6502 processor running at 2mHz; it has 32 kilobytes of RAM and no hard drive), Granjon’s BBC micro is a recent relic that evokes the dizzying speed of technological innovation and its effect on human perceptions of time. It is also a domestic object. The BBC micro was part of the first wave of pioneering computers that entered people’s homes, marketed as a tool and educational instrument, complete with its own entertainment facilities in the form of computer games. Granjon’s appropriation and regeneration of the BBC micro can be seen as a form of resistance to the tyranny of the new. Given “life” by a technology that seems, when compared with more recent computers and toys, as simple as a ticking clock, Granjon’s Fluffy Tamagotchi (1998) is a toddler-sized robot that eats gum-drops and poos blue custard. Dressed in a hand-made teddy bear suit, the Fluffy Tamagotchi issues programmed screams to indicate its various needs. Its crudeness and its components (a toddler’s wind-up tele-vision, VCR motors, run by BBC micro) all serve to underscore its nature as a nostalgic discard, and Granjon’s particular interest in the regeneration of earlier technologies. As a cultural phenomenon, the recent global tamagotchi craze reveals a complicated relationship between humans and machines. In offering his own parallel environments and fantastical construc-tions, he may also be disarming some of the fantasies and fears that we project upon machines and their makers. In the field of electronic art, Granjon’s experiments, observations, and constructions are ex-plorations of the relationship between the human and the techno-logical at the turn of the 21st century. His work is a reminder, that while the future is uncertain, the present lies in human hands.