Mechanical Storytelling: The Story of Grouchy Clown  |  2009		Return to Main Menu
		Mechanical Storytelling: The Story of Grouchy Clown is a hand-cranked wooden device that employs a series of mechanisms to animate a scene and present a character with whom users can interact. My focus in this work is the creation of mechanisms that are appropriate to the animations necessary for giving personality and “life” to this wooden object. When we see an artwork in the gallery, we assume that its main purpose is to be seen by the viewer. It is, in effect, waiting to be seen. In the same way, we think that an automaton is waiting for a person to activate it (by cranking the handle or whatever) and is actually ready and waiting to perform for us.
I began to question these common assumptions. Why do we hold these assumptions about the relationship between the audience and the performer? What if an object is not pleased with the user’s participation (or even the mere appearance of the user), and, moreover, doesn’t want to perform for the audience at all? Interested in exploring these ideas further, I decided to create an automaton in the form of a clown who does not want to perform for its audience. By creating an automaton that features a clown on a puppet theatre stage, complete with moving curtain, I wanted to emphasize the notion of an automaton as an object that we expect will perform for us.
		Mechanical Storytelling: The Story of Gouchy Clown features four slightly different scenes that repeat chronologically as you turn the handle. The initial setting of the automaton is a closed puppet theater. When you start turning the handle of the automaton, the curtains of the theater start opening to reveal the clown who, unpredictably, wears an angry face and does nothing. Then the curtains close. This is Scene 1.
		As you continue to crank the handle, the curtains open again, and you face the same clown, now with an even angrier face and moving mouth. He does not want to perform for you right now, but as long as you keep turning the handle, he has no choice but to show up. This is why he is getting angrier. If you turn the handle even further, the clown holds up a sign that says, “Do Not Disturb Me.” Keep turning the handle, and the curtains close, but the sign remains. This is the end of Scene 2.
Scene 3 begins (if you keep turning the handle!) with the curtains opening again. As you might expect by now, you will see the same clown, but now with an even angrier look. He now adds a sign to the previous “Do Not Disturb Me” sign – “PLEASE,” in large capital letters. Then the curtains close again, and only the two signs remain.
Continue turning the handle to see Scene 4, when the curtains open and reveal, once again, Grouchy the Clown. This time he takes back the signs that he’d put up in previous scenes and just closes the curtain. Then his hand appears through a gap in the curtains holding an arrow-shaped sign that points toward the handle that the user is turning. The user might then be shocked to read the words on this sign: “This handle is broken!” The handle is, of course, not broken. Grouchy the Clown just wants you to stop turning the handle so that he can go back to doing whatever he was doing behind the curtain. This is the end of Scene 4. Keep turning the handle (even though it’s “broken”), and the stage will return to Scene 1.