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Following the opening of Robots Building Robots in September 2016, the Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University commissioned artist Meghan Trainor to create a text-based or performative response to the exhibition. The result is an evocative sound piece called Robot Philter, which interweaves references to works in the exhibition and allusions to Trainor’s own work with reflections on the “haunted screen” and the digital expansion of “the membrane of personhood.” Listen:
Music by Jody Schaible
Recorded at Ahistorical Studio
Meghan Trainor is a Seattle artist exploring the intersections of human & machine, tangible & ephemeral, digital & physical. Her work has been shown and performed at spaces including the Flux Factory, New York; The Disseney Hub, Barcelona; The Esther M. Klein Art Gallery, Philadelphia; and 911 Media Art Center, Seattle.
She completed her Masters at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts/New York University and achieved Doctoral Candidacy at the University of Washington’s Center for Digital Art & Experimental Media. She has been artist-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Digital Performance Institute and the Janie & James Washington Foundation.
She is currently working on Sphagnan, a collaborative performance series, with Sarah Lypstk. A narrative akin to Thomas Pynchon for Girls, Sphagnan explores bog rituals, Northwest history, living outside, the craftsmanship of conductive ink making, digital witchcraft, adventure, and transformation.
The full text of Trainor’s artist book The Familiar Algorhythm, which offers an expanded meditation on some of the ideas found in Robots Philter, is available here. The book was produced for Bridge Productions’s April 2016 Curated Box Set, SIGIL. Special thanks to Sharon Arnold for sharing the digital version.