Creative Capitol Grant 2001
Submitted sat. 11/3/01
http://creative-capital.org/central/html/application/application.php3
CREATIVE CAPITOL GRANNNNT
o?o Total Project Budget
$75,000.00
o?o Amount Raised to
Date $50,000.00
Creative Capital Request
$20,000.00
(Maximum:$20,000)
Projected completion
date:6/03
(Date must fall after
September 1, 2002,
or application will be
disqualified.)
(MM/YY)
_____________________________________________________________
PROJECT TITLE: MACHINES FOR TRANSCENDANCE
ONE SENTENCE DESCRIPTION: I build kinetic machines and robots that live audiences are allowed to operate and interact with.
_____________________________________________________________
1. Project description
I build machines and robots that I allow my audience to operate.
I propose to develop 8 new pieces by the summer of 2003 using a more elaborate kind of input/output (a version of Artificial Intelligence) and exhibiting them at schools and assorted venues (with workshops) describing the evolution and technicalities of these pieces.
These machines and robots will be interfaced by live audiences via computers, sensors and the internet. They will continually monitor the audience volunteers responses, saving all information, learning and applying these interactions. They will have embedded memory and response capabilities via computers.
American culture and society is becoming increasingly passive and risk free (partly because of technology). I use technology to put people back in touch with intense real life experiences. There is nothing virtual here. Fear of death brings about social change. As man conquers Everest and disease, he (she) searches for other things, extreme sports, extreme lifestyles (i.e.: sex, drugs), extreme scholarship and extreme entertainment to challenge their mortality, to make him (her) feel alive. This is euphoric, addictive, cathartic, therapeutic, fun and quite sexual. In the performances, volunteers are willingly strapped onto moving beds gripped by flaming steel jaws, they volunteer to interact with some machines naked and that require submission. I have been repeatedly told the machines give them an experience like an intense sexual encounter.
2. WHAT/WHO ARE THE PRIMARY INFLUENCES ON YOUR WORK?
The tradition of technology-as-art that extends from da Vinci to Duchamp. As well as contemporary artists such as David Hammons, Paul McCarthy, Survival Research Laboratories and Louise Bourgoise.
THE HUMAN SOUL is continually seeking to realize its true being and fulfill its purpose in life. This can be seen in each individual's yearning to realize to the fullest the potentialities inherent in his or her being. MY ART HELPS ME DEFINE THIS AND HENCE MY LIFE PURPOSE. To take people out of the dark through sudden enlightenment.
For instance: Trial by fire, initiation rites (rites of passage, walkabout, homers oddesy, hazing, confirmation, Bar Mitzvahs, SEX, DRINKING, Yogic practices, searching for rapture, moral conversions in the face of cataclysmic natural events, the Frankenstein theory, Zen Buddhism, Self taught artists, Gallileo getting jailed, subcultures, to conquer fears, to find what makes me more human, machines as life changing transformative transcendent beings.
To be in awe, to be amazed by something in this world and then to respect it. To realize you are part of something bigger.
To find in what way can I best be utilized while on this planet.
Practicing any art allows the soul to grow. I want my audience to feel alive again, the experience of being alive. To make art that is cathartic, therapeutic, empowering and healing. To make the volunteers who operate my machines super heroes, to empower them.
3. WE SEEK TO SUPPORT WORK THAT IS EXPERIMENTAL IN NATURE. IN WHAT SPECIFIC WAYS DOES YOUR PROJECT TAKE AM INVENTIVE APPROACH TO CONTENT AND FORM?
My art is a mix of robots, machines, sculpture, computers, science, inventions, audience interaction and storytelling.
My hope is to participate in and help shape the inevitable goal of building machines with emotions that feedback from their volunteers (audience), engineer systems that exhibit intelligence, problem-solving skills, cunning, empathy, soul, and a genuine interest in one's human condition. They will listen and watch, converse and interact in other complex ways.
The main collaborators are the audience. I am not trying to humble volunteers with technology, rather empower them by putting the machines in their hands. I am able to make the volunteers a "star" by putting them in the spotlight. I never operate the machines in the live performances. I am only interested in giving the audience (especially women) a real life experience, not a passive one, nothing virtual here.
I am interested in building machines that work therapeutically and as a form of play. My work challenges both the applications of technology and the boundaries between the audience and performers. The machines and their interactions with the audience reinvent technology as its own antithesis—it is no longer the use of machines to replace people or do things they can’t, instead the machines facilitate the thing that only humans can do: feel.
4. IN ADDITION TO PROVIDING FINANCIAL SUPPORT, HOW CAN CREATIVE TIME HELP YOUR ARTISTIC AND PROFESSIONAL GOALS?
I need help with general office and promotional work. Everywhere I have performed the response has been large and excellent. I do have a problem getting the right venues and good promotion to let people know what it is I am doing and where. The media love writing about me, I just need to let them know what it is I am doing and where, the crowds follow.
5a. Who are the ideal audiences for your work? How might you reach such audiences?
Anyone: I have found children are very interested in my work as are their parents who are now around my age (40). So, all ages, classes, sexes and races. Colleges and universities have shown great interest as have the students.
I would reach them by travelling extensively presenting live performances and through the media and the internet.
5b. What would be appropriate venues for your work?
Anywhere: art galleries, museums, and the vacant lots around them; rock clubs, raceways, and hockey rinks, parking lots, in the city, in the country, and the places in between. I do not discriminate between a garage or an art gallery. And any of these venues will and have worked. I enjoy the variety.
Do you have existing relationships with any of these venues?
Yes, quite a few, I have traveled the US extensively exhibiting in a large spectrum of venues.
6. Copy and paste a plain-text version of your current resume (3 pages maximum).
Not used:
The pieces become a form of interpersonal communication through touch and " force-feedback" technology, a project to explore intimacy and social interaction. In a fun, conceptual way the work attempts to generate the kind of enlightenment gained by some after near death experiences. This approach shatters the barrier between passive audience and art(ist). By utilizing this technology and provoking their fear, a realization of something more important than this fear can occur. Thus the event validates and affirms their very existence enabling them to get in touch with their own mythic reality.
Submitted and remailed by them to me:
Subject:
Creative Capital: 2001-2002 Grant Application
Date:
Sun, 4 Nov 2001 00:05:17 -0500
From:
Creative Capital
To:
kal@seemen.org
CC:
application@creative-capital.org
Thank you for applying to the Creative Capital Foundation.
Included below is a summary of the application you submitted. Please
save a copy for your records. It will be needed to complete your
application for the second round, should you be selected.
As stated on the application page, we are not able to accept any changes
to applications once they have been submitted, and only the first
application to arrive from an individual will be accepted.
You will receive another email confirming that your application has been
processed. If you do not receive this second confirmation email within
two weeks, please alert us by email at info@creative-capital.org.
Please do not reply to this email, it is generated automatically.
Thank you
The staff of Creative Capital
+ + +
FIRST NAME
Kal
MIDDLE INITIAL
E
LAST NAME
Spelletich
ADDRESS
1043 Marin St.
CITY
San Francisco
STATE
CA
ZIP
94124
DAYTIME PHONE
415-821-7621
EVENING PHONE
415-821-7621
EMAIL
kal@seemen.org
URL
www.seemen.org
BIRTH DATE
12/23/1960
CITIZEN
citizen
GENDER
Male
ETHNICITY
European American
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT CREATIVE CAPITAL?
Word of mouth
COLLABORATORS
not applicable
CATEGORY
Robotics
TOTAL PROJECT BUDGET
75,000
AMOUNT RAISED TO DATE
50,000.
CREATIVE CAPITAL REQUEST
20,000.
PROJECTED COMPLETION DATE
6/03
CURRENT STATUS
Touring/Distribution/Exhibition
TITLE
MACHINES FOR TRANSCENDANCE
ONE SENTENCE DESCRIPTION
I build kinetic machines and robots that live audiences are allowed to operate and interact with.
1. PROJECT DESCRIPTION
I build machines and robots that I allow my audience to operate.
I propose to develop 8 new pieces by the summer of 2003 using a more elaborate kind of input/output (a version of Artificial
Intelligence) and exhibiting them at schools and assorted venues (with workshops) describing the evolution and technicalities of
these pieces.
These machines and robots will be interfaced by live audiences via computers, sensors and the internet. They will continually
monitor the audience volunteers responses, saving all information, learning and applying these interactions. They will have
embedded memory and response capabilities via computers.
American culture and society is becoming increasingly passive and risk free (partly because of technology). I use technology to
put people back in touch with intense real life experiences. There is nothing virtual here. Fear of death brings about social
change. As man conquers Everest and disease, he (she) searches for other things, extreme sports, extreme lifestyles (i.e.: sex,
drugs), extreme scholarship and extreme entertainment to challenge their mortality, to make him (her) feel alive. This is
euphoric, addictive, cathartic, therapeutic, fun and quite sexual. In the performances, volunteers are willingly strapped onto
moving beds gripped by flaming steel jaws, they volunteer to interact with some machines naked and that require submission. I
have been repeatedly told the machines give them an experience like an intense sexual encounter.
2. WHAT/WHO ARE THE PRIMARY INFLUENCES ON YOUR WORK?
The tradition of technology-as-art that extends from da Vinci to Duchamp. As well as contemporary artists such as David Hammons,
Paul McCarthy, Survival Research Laboratories and Louise Bourgoise.
THE HUMAN SOUL is continually seeking to realize its true being and fulfill its purpose in life. This can be seen in each
individual's yearning to realize to the fullest the potentialities inherent in his or her being. MY ART HELPS ME DEFINE THIS AND
HENCE MY LIFE PURPOSE. To take people out of the dark through sudden enlightenment.
For instance: Trial by fire, initiation rites (rites of passage, walkabout, homers oddesy, hazing, confirmation, Bar Mitzvahs,
SEX, DRINKING, Yogic practices, searching for rapture, moral conversions in the face of cataclysmic natural events, the
Frankenstein theory, Zen Buddhism, Self taught artists, Gallileo getting jailed, subcultures, to conquer fears, to find what makes
me more human, machines as life changing transformative transcendent beings.
To be in awe, to be amazed by something in this world and then to respect it. To realize you are part of something bigger.
To find in what way can I best be utilized while on this planet.
Practicing any art allows the soul to grow. I want my audience to feel alive again, the experience of being alive. To make art
that is cathartic, therapeutic, empowering and healing. To make the volunteers who operate my machines super heroes, to empower
them.
3. WE SEEK TO SUPPORT WORK THAT IS EXPERIMENTAL IN NATURE. IN WHAT
SPECIFIC WAYS DOES YOUR PROJECT TAKE AN INVENTIVE APPROACH TO CONTENT
AND FORM?
My art is a mix of robots, machines, sculpture, computers, science, inventions, audience interaction and storytelling.
My hope is to participate in and help shape the inevitable goal of building machines with emotions that feedback from their
volunteers (audience), engineer systems that exhibit intelligence, problem-solving skills, cunning, empathy, soul, and a genuine
interest in one's human condition. They will listen and watch, converse and interact in other complex ways.
The main collaborators are the audience. I am not trying to humble volunteers with technology, rather empower them by putting the
machines in their hands. I am able to make the volunteers a "star" by putting them in the spotlight. I never operate the machines
in the live performances. I am only interested in giving the audience (especially women) a real life experience, not a passive
one, nothing virtual here.
I am interested in building machines that work therapeutically and as a form of play. My work challenges both the applications of
technology and the boundaries between the audience and performers. The machines and their interactions with the audience reinvent
technology as its own antithesis—it is no longer the use of machines to replace people or do things they can’t, instead the
machines facilitate the thing that only humans can do: feel.
4. IN ADDITION TO PROVIDING FINANCIAL SUPPORT, HOW CAN CREATIVE CAPITAL
HELP YOU ACHIEVE YOUR ARTISTIC AND PROFESSIONAL GOALS?
I need help with general office and promotional work. Everywhere I have performed the response has been large and excellent. I do
have a problem getting the right venues and good promotion to let people know what it is I am doing and where. The media love
writing about me, I just need to let them know what it is I am doing and where, the crowds follow.
5A. WHO ARE THE IDEAL AUDIENCES FOR YOUR WORK? HOW MIGHT YOU REACH SUCH
AUDIENCES?
Anyone: I have found children are very interested in my work as are their parents who are now around my age (40). So, all ages,
classes, sexes and races. Colleges and universities have shown great interest as have the students.
5B. WHAT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE VENUES FOR YOUR WORK? DO YOU HAVE EXISTING
RELATIONSHIPS WITH ANY OF THESE VENUES?
Anywhere: art galleries, museums, and the vacant lots around them; rock clubs, raceways, and hockey rinks, parking lots, in the
city, in the country, and the places in between. I do not discriminate between a garage or an art gallery. And any of these venues
will and have worked. I enjoy the variety.
Yes I have existing relationships with these venues, quite a few, I have traveled the US extensively exhibiting in a large
spectrum of venues.
6. YOUR CURRENT RESUME
Kal Spelletich
Bio. Born Dec. 23, 1960 in Davenport Iowa. Moved to Iowa City, Colorado, California, New York, Austin Texas, currently residing in
San Francisco.
Education
MFA University of Texas at Austin in Media art
BFA University of Iowa in Media Art.
Awards and Grants, MIT Media Lab, Boston, Johnson County Community College, Kansas City, Burning Man Festival honorarium 6 years,
Art Without Walls, Pittsburgh, ART Matters Honorarium, NY, New Forms Regional Initiative Grant, Austin, Dorthea Lange Award, San
Francisco, Spaces, Cleveland, Jumpstart Theatre, San Antonio, Franklin Furnace Fund, NY, The Jerome Foundation, NY, Artists Space,
Group Support Fund, NY, Franklin Furnace, NY, Spaces, Cleveland, Mexi-Arte, Austin, Art Matters, NY, NetArt Initiative,
channelp.com, Pseudo Programs, Inc., Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., Getty Museum: L.A., Jack Hanley Gallery, S.F., Blue Collar
Gallery, San Antonio, Austin Media Arts, Austin, Bomp Records, PARD Arts Festival, Den Hague, New York State Council on the Arts.,
Circle.com, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's digital arm, Thunder Gulch, Parsons School of Design, Digital Design
Department, The School of Visual Arts, Postmasters Gallery, Gallery9/Walker Art Center, The Andy Warhol Fo!
undation for the Visual Arts Inc., The Heathcote Art Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts' Technology Initiative,
Eyebeam Atelier, Inc., New Museum of Art and Technology, The National Endowment for the Arts, Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art,
Science, and Technology.
Art Collections Museum of Modern Art: New York, NY, Getty Museum: Los Angeles, CA, Jack Hanley Gallery: San
Francisco, CA: Videos and Machines Blue Collar Gallery: San Antonio, TX, Austin Media Arts: Austin, TX, Pete Blash: New Jersey,
The Lab:San Francisco, Jack Hanley:San Francisco, Rudy Rucker:San Jose
RELATED WORK: MIT Media Lab, Collaboration with Robert Wilson, Acted and wrote script for film SLACKER and other plays and
performances, Intern at Survival Research Laboratories, Gradfuate degree atUT Austin in Interdisciplinary Arts, taught Drawing 1,
Sculpture 1 and Design 1 at UT Austin and Dougherty Arts Center, Started a silkscreen business and truck repair business, worked
as an art Consultant/collaborated for rock bands, ZZ Top, Styx, The Eagles, Metallica, Butthole Surfers, The Boredoms. currently
writing for assorted magazines and weeklies and doing special effects, welding and construction jobs.
Kal has been recently featured in the magazines SURFACE, Playboy, Spin, METROPOLIS, OUI, FOXNEWS.COM, 6 times in WIRED magazine,
Real Edge, The New Republic and countless weeklies across the US. Kal Spelletich has been repeatedly voted one of the top artists
in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has been showcased on ABC, The Learning Channel, SHOWTIME, PBS and countless cable-access
programs.
http://creative-capital.org/central/html/application/application.php3
CREATIVE CAPITOL GRANNNNT
o?o Total Project Budget
$75,000.00
o?o Amount Raised to
Date $50,000.00
Creative Capital Request
$20,000.00
(Maximum:$20,000)
Projected completion
date:6/03
(Date must fall after
September 1, 2002,
or application will be
disqualified.)
(MM/YY)
_____________________________________________________________
PROJECT TITLE: MACHINES FOR TRANSCENDANCE
ONE SENTENCE DESCRIPTION: I build kinetic machines and robots that live audiences are allowed to operate and interact with.
_____________________________________________________________
1. Project description
I build machines and robots that I allow my audience to operate.
I propose to develop 8 new pieces by the summer of 2003 using a more elaborate kind of input/output (a version of Artificial Intelligence) and exhibiting them at schools and assorted venues (with workshops) describing the evolution and technicalities of these pieces.
These machines and robots will be interfaced by live audiences via computers, sensors and the internet. They will continually monitor the audience volunteers responses, saving all information, learning and applying these interactions. They will have embedded memory and response capabilities via computers.
American culture and society is becoming increasingly passive and risk free (partly because of technology). I use technology to put people back in touch with intense real life experiences. There is nothing virtual here. Fear of death brings about social change. As man conquers Everest and disease, he (she) searches for other things, extreme sports, extreme lifestyles (i.e.: sex, drugs), extreme scholarship and extreme entertainment to challenge their mortality, to make him (her) feel alive. This is euphoric, addictive, cathartic, therapeutic, fun and quite sexual. In the performances, volunteers are willingly strapped onto moving beds gripped by flaming steel jaws, they volunteer to interact with some machines naked and that require submission. I have been repeatedly told the machines give them an experience like an intense sexual encounter.
2. WHAT/WHO ARE THE PRIMARY INFLUENCES ON YOUR WORK?
The tradition of technology-as-art that extends from da Vinci to Duchamp. As well as contemporary artists such as David Hammons, Paul McCarthy, Survival Research Laboratories and Louise Bourgoise.
THE HUMAN SOUL is continually seeking to realize its true being and fulfill its purpose in life. This can be seen in each individual's yearning to realize to the fullest the potentialities inherent in his or her being. MY ART HELPS ME DEFINE THIS AND HENCE MY LIFE PURPOSE. To take people out of the dark through sudden enlightenment.
For instance: Trial by fire, initiation rites (rites of passage, walkabout, homers oddesy, hazing, confirmation, Bar Mitzvahs, SEX, DRINKING, Yogic practices, searching for rapture, moral conversions in the face of cataclysmic natural events, the Frankenstein theory, Zen Buddhism, Self taught artists, Gallileo getting jailed, subcultures, to conquer fears, to find what makes me more human, machines as life changing transformative transcendent beings.
To be in awe, to be amazed by something in this world and then to respect it. To realize you are part of something bigger.
To find in what way can I best be utilized while on this planet.
Practicing any art allows the soul to grow. I want my audience to feel alive again, the experience of being alive. To make art that is cathartic, therapeutic, empowering and healing. To make the volunteers who operate my machines super heroes, to empower them.
3. WE SEEK TO SUPPORT WORK THAT IS EXPERIMENTAL IN NATURE. IN WHAT SPECIFIC WAYS DOES YOUR PROJECT TAKE AM INVENTIVE APPROACH TO CONTENT AND FORM?
My art is a mix of robots, machines, sculpture, computers, science, inventions, audience interaction and storytelling.
My hope is to participate in and help shape the inevitable goal of building machines with emotions that feedback from their volunteers (audience), engineer systems that exhibit intelligence, problem-solving skills, cunning, empathy, soul, and a genuine interest in one's human condition. They will listen and watch, converse and interact in other complex ways.
The main collaborators are the audience. I am not trying to humble volunteers with technology, rather empower them by putting the machines in their hands. I am able to make the volunteers a "star" by putting them in the spotlight. I never operate the machines in the live performances. I am only interested in giving the audience (especially women) a real life experience, not a passive one, nothing virtual here.
I am interested in building machines that work therapeutically and as a form of play. My work challenges both the applications of technology and the boundaries between the audience and performers. The machines and their interactions with the audience reinvent technology as its own antithesis—it is no longer the use of machines to replace people or do things they can’t, instead the machines facilitate the thing that only humans can do: feel.
4. IN ADDITION TO PROVIDING FINANCIAL SUPPORT, HOW CAN CREATIVE TIME HELP YOUR ARTISTIC AND PROFESSIONAL GOALS?
I need help with general office and promotional work. Everywhere I have performed the response has been large and excellent. I do have a problem getting the right venues and good promotion to let people know what it is I am doing and where. The media love writing about me, I just need to let them know what it is I am doing and where, the crowds follow.
5a. Who are the ideal audiences for your work? How might you reach such audiences?
Anyone: I have found children are very interested in my work as are their parents who are now around my age (40). So, all ages, classes, sexes and races. Colleges and universities have shown great interest as have the students.
I would reach them by travelling extensively presenting live performances and through the media and the internet.
5b. What would be appropriate venues for your work?
Anywhere: art galleries, museums, and the vacant lots around them; rock clubs, raceways, and hockey rinks, parking lots, in the city, in the country, and the places in between. I do not discriminate between a garage or an art gallery. And any of these venues will and have worked. I enjoy the variety.
Do you have existing relationships with any of these venues?
Yes, quite a few, I have traveled the US extensively exhibiting in a large spectrum of venues.
6. Copy and paste a plain-text version of your current resume (3 pages maximum).
Not used:
The pieces become a form of interpersonal communication through touch and " force-feedback" technology, a project to explore intimacy and social interaction. In a fun, conceptual way the work attempts to generate the kind of enlightenment gained by some after near death experiences. This approach shatters the barrier between passive audience and art(ist). By utilizing this technology and provoking their fear, a realization of something more important than this fear can occur. Thus the event validates and affirms their very existence enabling them to get in touch with their own mythic reality.
Submitted and remailed by them to me:
Subject:
Creative Capital: 2001-2002 Grant Application
Date:
Sun, 4 Nov 2001 00:05:17 -0500
From:
Creative Capital
To:
kal@seemen.org
CC:
application@creative-capital.org
Thank you for applying to the Creative Capital Foundation.
Included below is a summary of the application you submitted. Please
save a copy for your records. It will be needed to complete your
application for the second round, should you be selected.
As stated on the application page, we are not able to accept any changes
to applications once they have been submitted, and only the first
application to arrive from an individual will be accepted.
You will receive another email confirming that your application has been
processed. If you do not receive this second confirmation email within
two weeks, please alert us by email at info@creative-capital.org.
Please do not reply to this email, it is generated automatically.
Thank you
The staff of Creative Capital
+ + +
FIRST NAME
Kal
MIDDLE INITIAL
E
LAST NAME
Spelletich
ADDRESS
1043 Marin St.
CITY
San Francisco
STATE
CA
ZIP
94124
DAYTIME PHONE
415-821-7621
EVENING PHONE
415-821-7621
kal@seemen.org
URL
www.seemen.org
BIRTH DATE
12/23/1960
CITIZEN
citizen
GENDER
Male
ETHNICITY
European American
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT CREATIVE CAPITAL?
Word of mouth
COLLABORATORS
not applicable
CATEGORY
Robotics
TOTAL PROJECT BUDGET
75,000
AMOUNT RAISED TO DATE
50,000.
CREATIVE CAPITAL REQUEST
20,000.
PROJECTED COMPLETION DATE
6/03
CURRENT STATUS
Touring/Distribution/Exhibition
TITLE
MACHINES FOR TRANSCENDANCE
ONE SENTENCE DESCRIPTION
I build kinetic machines and robots that live audiences are allowed to operate and interact with.
1. PROJECT DESCRIPTION
I build machines and robots that I allow my audience to operate.
I propose to develop 8 new pieces by the summer of 2003 using a more elaborate kind of input/output (a version of Artificial
Intelligence) and exhibiting them at schools and assorted venues (with workshops) describing the evolution and technicalities of
these pieces.
These machines and robots will be interfaced by live audiences via computers, sensors and the internet. They will continually
monitor the audience volunteers responses, saving all information, learning and applying these interactions. They will have
embedded memory and response capabilities via computers.
American culture and society is becoming increasingly passive and risk free (partly because of technology). I use technology to
put people back in touch with intense real life experiences. There is nothing virtual here. Fear of death brings about social
change. As man conquers Everest and disease, he (she) searches for other things, extreme sports, extreme lifestyles (i.e.: sex,
drugs), extreme scholarship and extreme entertainment to challenge their mortality, to make him (her) feel alive. This is
euphoric, addictive, cathartic, therapeutic, fun and quite sexual. In the performances, volunteers are willingly strapped onto
moving beds gripped by flaming steel jaws, they volunteer to interact with some machines naked and that require submission. I
have been repeatedly told the machines give them an experience like an intense sexual encounter.
2. WHAT/WHO ARE THE PRIMARY INFLUENCES ON YOUR WORK?
The tradition of technology-as-art that extends from da Vinci to Duchamp. As well as contemporary artists such as David Hammons,
Paul McCarthy, Survival Research Laboratories and Louise Bourgoise.
THE HUMAN SOUL is continually seeking to realize its true being and fulfill its purpose in life. This can be seen in each
individual's yearning to realize to the fullest the potentialities inherent in his or her being. MY ART HELPS ME DEFINE THIS AND
HENCE MY LIFE PURPOSE. To take people out of the dark through sudden enlightenment.
For instance: Trial by fire, initiation rites (rites of passage, walkabout, homers oddesy, hazing, confirmation, Bar Mitzvahs,
SEX, DRINKING, Yogic practices, searching for rapture, moral conversions in the face of cataclysmic natural events, the
Frankenstein theory, Zen Buddhism, Self taught artists, Gallileo getting jailed, subcultures, to conquer fears, to find what makes
me more human, machines as life changing transformative transcendent beings.
To be in awe, to be amazed by something in this world and then to respect it. To realize you are part of something bigger.
To find in what way can I best be utilized while on this planet.
Practicing any art allows the soul to grow. I want my audience to feel alive again, the experience of being alive. To make art
that is cathartic, therapeutic, empowering and healing. To make the volunteers who operate my machines super heroes, to empower
them.
3. WE SEEK TO SUPPORT WORK THAT IS EXPERIMENTAL IN NATURE. IN WHAT
SPECIFIC WAYS DOES YOUR PROJECT TAKE AN INVENTIVE APPROACH TO CONTENT
AND FORM?
My art is a mix of robots, machines, sculpture, computers, science, inventions, audience interaction and storytelling.
My hope is to participate in and help shape the inevitable goal of building machines with emotions that feedback from their
volunteers (audience), engineer systems that exhibit intelligence, problem-solving skills, cunning, empathy, soul, and a genuine
interest in one's human condition. They will listen and watch, converse and interact in other complex ways.
The main collaborators are the audience. I am not trying to humble volunteers with technology, rather empower them by putting the
machines in their hands. I am able to make the volunteers a "star" by putting them in the spotlight. I never operate the machines
in the live performances. I am only interested in giving the audience (especially women) a real life experience, not a passive
one, nothing virtual here.
I am interested in building machines that work therapeutically and as a form of play. My work challenges both the applications of
technology and the boundaries between the audience and performers. The machines and their interactions with the audience reinvent
technology as its own antithesis—it is no longer the use of machines to replace people or do things they can’t, instead the
machines facilitate the thing that only humans can do: feel.
4. IN ADDITION TO PROVIDING FINANCIAL SUPPORT, HOW CAN CREATIVE CAPITAL
HELP YOU ACHIEVE YOUR ARTISTIC AND PROFESSIONAL GOALS?
I need help with general office and promotional work. Everywhere I have performed the response has been large and excellent. I do
have a problem getting the right venues and good promotion to let people know what it is I am doing and where. The media love
writing about me, I just need to let them know what it is I am doing and where, the crowds follow.
5A. WHO ARE THE IDEAL AUDIENCES FOR YOUR WORK? HOW MIGHT YOU REACH SUCH
AUDIENCES?
Anyone: I have found children are very interested in my work as are their parents who are now around my age (40). So, all ages,
classes, sexes and races. Colleges and universities have shown great interest as have the students.
5B. WHAT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE VENUES FOR YOUR WORK? DO YOU HAVE EXISTING
RELATIONSHIPS WITH ANY OF THESE VENUES?
Anywhere: art galleries, museums, and the vacant lots around them; rock clubs, raceways, and hockey rinks, parking lots, in the
city, in the country, and the places in between. I do not discriminate between a garage or an art gallery. And any of these venues
will and have worked. I enjoy the variety.
Yes I have existing relationships with these venues, quite a few, I have traveled the US extensively exhibiting in a large
spectrum of venues.
6. YOUR CURRENT RESUME
Kal Spelletich
Bio. Born Dec. 23, 1960 in Davenport Iowa. Moved to Iowa City, Colorado, California, New York, Austin Texas, currently residing in
San Francisco.
Education
MFA University of Texas at Austin in Media art
BFA University of Iowa in Media Art.
Awards and Grants, MIT Media Lab, Boston, Johnson County Community College, Kansas City, Burning Man Festival honorarium 6 years,
Art Without Walls, Pittsburgh, ART Matters Honorarium, NY, New Forms Regional Initiative Grant, Austin, Dorthea Lange Award, San
Francisco, Spaces, Cleveland, Jumpstart Theatre, San Antonio, Franklin Furnace Fund, NY, The Jerome Foundation, NY, Artists Space,
Group Support Fund, NY, Franklin Furnace, NY, Spaces, Cleveland, Mexi-Arte, Austin, Art Matters, NY, NetArt Initiative,
channelp.com, Pseudo Programs, Inc., Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., Getty Museum: L.A., Jack Hanley Gallery, S.F., Blue Collar
Gallery, San Antonio, Austin Media Arts, Austin, Bomp Records, PARD Arts Festival, Den Hague, New York State Council on the Arts.,
Circle.com, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's digital arm, Thunder Gulch, Parsons School of Design, Digital Design
Department, The School of Visual Arts, Postmasters Gallery, Gallery9/Walker Art Center, The Andy Warhol Fo!
undation for the Visual Arts Inc., The Heathcote Art Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts' Technology Initiative,
Eyebeam Atelier, Inc., New Museum of Art and Technology, The National Endowment for the Arts, Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art,
Science, and Technology.
Art Collections Museum of Modern Art: New York, NY, Getty Museum: Los Angeles, CA, Jack Hanley Gallery: San
Francisco, CA: Videos and Machines Blue Collar Gallery: San Antonio, TX, Austin Media Arts: Austin, TX, Pete Blash: New Jersey,
The Lab:San Francisco, Jack Hanley:San Francisco, Rudy Rucker:San Jose
RELATED WORK: MIT Media Lab, Collaboration with Robert Wilson, Acted and wrote script for film SLACKER and other plays and
performances, Intern at Survival Research Laboratories, Gradfuate degree atUT Austin in Interdisciplinary Arts, taught Drawing 1,
Sculpture 1 and Design 1 at UT Austin and Dougherty Arts Center, Started a silkscreen business and truck repair business, worked
as an art Consultant/collaborated for rock bands, ZZ Top, Styx, The Eagles, Metallica, Butthole Surfers, The Boredoms. currently
writing for assorted magazines and weeklies and doing special effects, welding and construction jobs.
Kal has been recently featured in the magazines SURFACE, Playboy, Spin, METROPOLIS, OUI, FOXNEWS.COM, 6 times in WIRED magazine,
Real Edge, The New Republic and countless weeklies across the US. Kal Spelletich has been repeatedly voted one of the top artists
in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has been showcased on ABC, The Learning Channel, SHOWTIME, PBS and countless cable-access
programs.