SRL fantasy lecture

Lee Ann Price

4-14-11

Lecture Homework: Fantasy

            The work of SRL is all made of metal that is their medium that they basically just use for everything and then they add things to make them mobile and able to be controlled by a remote control. To have them put under the category fantasy and then seeing the videos of their shows, the fantasies that are fulfilled are seeing things destroyed and set on fire which since it is illegal to just set stuff on fire or destroy things just for the pure enjoyment, one can see where attending their shows to see all that stuff happen can fulfill some fantasies. Also it is considered fantasy because they make the machines themselves for the sake of art and creating shows instead of creating things for the military. The SRL’s performances and artwork ended up causing them to be the original guys who started the whole robot fad. A lot of people started getting together and creating robots so they could be famous as well and soon there ended up being television shows that wanted teams to get together to build the better robot which started all the robot competitions. After that the robots carried over into cartoon shows like transformers and voltron where in one the cars transformed into the robot and in some other cartoons the robots required humans to pilot the machines themselves and they would battle other robots and various bad guys. Then there were movies made that had robots in them like Star Wars, which had robots that helped them on their quests and then there robots that were built that were a replica of a human being. In a way there are key elements that are similar or the same to the robots built by the SRL’s because the basic mechanic of robotics were taken and used in different ways but the fact that they are called robots and act and move like robots is the same. The differences are the fact that along the way the element of just creating the robots for artwork and then using them as performance pieces kind of got lost. Instead of creating robotic art to simulate destruction and use them as performance pieces and artwork, they are being used for just merely destruction instead of the pure enjoyment of making art. I think that the SRL are yanks with tanks because they came from the US and most of their shows happen in the western US but usually when I think of someone as a yank I think of someone whose up north around New York not someone from California. I think that SRL’s work does promote and critique mechanized violence because they made the machines with all the flame throwers, missile launchers and etc., for the purpose of using the machines to destroy objects such as the stack of television sets that were seen pushed over in one video. Even though I think it promotes mechanized violence I do think that they have no intention of using the machines to hurt people. I think the targeted audience ranges kids to adults because everyone loves to watch machines operate. I think the reason why they staged the event in Amsterdam instead of the other places was because people over in the middle east would probably try to take advantage of or learn how to build the machines so that they could use them for war instead of just enjoying the art and watching machines destroy objects for the sake of art.