Alan RathSymbols of Sentience

two speakers assembled in a wing shape with two telescoping arms that make for eyes
Alan Rath, Thumper V, 1996. Aluminum, steel, plastic, and electronics on four speakers, 59  x 20  x 22 inches. San José Museum of Art. Gift of Katie and Drew Gibson, 2014.05.04. Photo by Douglas Sandberg.

In the 1980s Alan Rath began making electronic sculptures with “body parts” that were recognizably human or animal, such as eyes, ears, and hands. “Machines are extensions of the sense organs, giving us the ability to ‘remote-sense’”1—like a telephone, for example. In the snaillike sculpture Thumper V (1996), a pair of pulsating speaker cones form the body and two smaller speakers perched on the tips of antennae suggest a pair of eyes. Moving at low, inaudible frequencies, the pulsing speakers seem to breathe and blink, evoking the rhythms of the human body. In an era dominated by virtual movement, Rath became interested in the physical movement of motorized sculptures. Like human surrogates, they point to the complex relationship of humans to technology, offering “critical alter egos to the sleek, efficient machines that surround us in daily life.”2

  1. Alan Rath, in Kenneth Baker, “Alan Rath: Digital World,” ARTnews, May 1992, 70. ↩︎

  2. Peter Boswell, Viewpoints (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1991), 1. ↩︎