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Kurt, Volker, Cripple
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Abb. 01  |
"It's a remarkable piece of apparatus." 1 A machine created by the artist Nikolaus Passath, titled or better called “Kurt”, in order to tattoo his creator’s forearm in a unique session. In its conversion this fine example of precision engineering is not unlike one of the first sphygmographs from the mid-19th century. (Image 02) |
Abb. 02 
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Marey’s 2 invention, made around 1860, magnified the regular movement of patient's pulse waves and recorded a tracing of it on paper.
Kurt, built in 2002, utilizes algorithmic arbitrariness (of elapsing time codes) to mark the skin of his creator permanently. |
Abb. 03 
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The graph, used as a diagnostic tool and regarded as mechanical representation of the living organism in medicine for more than a century, turns into an intrinsic symbol of the machine itself. But unlike Kafka's sadistic judiciary apparatus described "In the Penal Colony", Kurt doesn't kill his victims, when cutting his sign into their skin. |
Abb. 04  |
Confronted with the body, the skin serves as immediate interface for jet another object. "Volker" seduces observers to assume the possibility of male (pro)creation, through invention. Stripped off, the robot clings to men, using the living organism as an extension, to incorporate the prosthetic god of technological evolution.
Transferring this Freudian notion of the incomplete being, which compensates weaknesses with tools, to automatons, naturally augments their fragile features with sentient vulnerability.
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Equipped with the formal repertoire of contemporary media myths — Tetsuo, Cyborgs
or Matrix shape the popular context of these works — the artist succeeds, with reference to classic settings, in staging the fall of man due to technology in terms of sensual (auto)erotic episodes. |
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Anyway, true (Promethean) shame comes to us modern humans merely in the face of our own inventions, reproaching our inadequacy. We fail to live up to our constructions. For a machine to fall short of this anticipation is pitiful. |
Abb. 05  |
"Cripple" is an imperfect apparatus. Limited in motor functions, pathetically groaning, he (indeed) is wasting away as a kinetic work of art. This object by Nikolaus Passath shows that the strange flaw of "having become instead of having been made" 3 can be projected onto automatons as well. |
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| 1. |
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compare Franz Kafka, The complete short stories:
In the Penal Colony (English online translation differing quite substantially from my 1996 Minerva copy of The complete short stories.)
In
der Strafkolonie
(German original)
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Marey,
Étienne Jules 1830 – 1904, pioneer in the study of blood pressure and the developer of the first practical sphygmograph.
Abb.02 Sphygmograph by Marey, probably 1860
taken from: Joachim Krausse, 'INFORMATION AT A GLANCE On the history of the diagram' published in FORM+ZWECK 16/1999/31.Jahrgang, Berlin http://www.formundzweck.com/
See also:
vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de for reference details of a very similar drawing
and again vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de for a slightly different depiction of Marey's device.
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compare Günther Anders, The Outdatedness of Human Beings (Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen), volume 1
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| 4. |
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Nikolaus Passath
Abb.01 Abb.03 'Kurt' 2002, image Sue Sellinger
Abb.04 'Volker' 2004, image Christian Stiendl
Abb.05 'Krüppel' (cripple) 2005 [since 2007 'Something For The Pain']
Images courtesy of Nikolaus Passath, all rights reserved.
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File log:
- English translation online since May 2007. Last changes: 4th of March 2010.
- External links are being updated and augmented regularly. Suggestions are very welcome!
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