Alumni Profile
Ian Ingram
Class of 2007: MFA| Homepage | http://www.ingramclockworks.com |
Bio
A Lamettrian Geppettoist
Both a technologist and an artist, I create work that takes a variety of forms: mechatronic installations, conceptual proposals, non-narrative animations, Giant Squid-seeking collectives, and artworks that are meant to be released into the wild to survive on their own. I use robotics and other media to create vital machines that are meant to seem less like machines than like natural creatures that, however, have inclinations and behaviors unprecedented in the natural world. I attempt to transfer my love for the strange, mysterious and cryptic to audiences through artworks that create symbioses between anthropogenic and natural systems. Such machines require a synthesis of robotics, choreography, animation and a sense of awe of the inner-workings of the natural world, both its macroscopic, dynamic morphologies and the algorithmic underpinnings of the systems we call Life.
Early experiences forged in my head that deep water holds many secrets. Sitting on the banks of Loch Ness, having met failure on a late night venture to find gnomes in the dew-soaked forests of Scotland, my father and I saw the famed Nessie swiftly following a rowboat in the center of the Loch. Later learning of the discoveries of marvelous creatures and fantastic landscapes in the depths of the sea further fueled my preoccupation with the things the sea is hiding. Immersed under fathoms of salt water were shipwrecks, legendary flooded cities, lost submarines, sulphur dioxide-metabolizing fauna, huge soulfully singing mammals, geothermal vents, fish once thought extinct, and tiny, peculiar plants and animals.
In short, I developed a deep love for the sea, a love that encompasses the creatures and phenomena of nature and also the innovation and aesthetic of mankind’s maritime creations. Majestic container ships, gritty harbors, networks of grubby wooden piers held up by barnacle-encrusted pylons are admirable in their respect for nature’s strength and permanence. Machines of the ocean work with and in deference to the forces of the sea, not against them. Ocean-going technology does not try to be sterile like a hospital ward, ordered like an office cubicle or controlling like the innards of a combustion engine, it is biofouled, rugged, rusted and rotted; embracing, and hence enhanced by, the immitigable forces of the sea.
My lifelong infatuations with ecological balance, with things cryptic and hidden, and with the border between mankind’s creations and those of nature have led to work that attempts to amalgamate them all. That my work often takes the form of puppets, animations and robots is also clear evidence that I am amongst those afflicted with the Geppetto Complex- the unending desire to create sentient, living beings through artificial means.
