SRL Performance in Los Angeles, 2006

Survival Research Laboratories (SRL) is a machine performance art group credited for pioneering the genre of large scale machine performance [1], [2]. After about 30 years in San Francisco, California, SRL spent most of 2008 moving 160 tons of choice machines, tools, robots, and paraphernalia and is now headquartered in Petaluma, California [3].

Survival Research Laboratories was conceived of and founded by Mark Pauline in November 1978. Since its inception SRL has operated as an organization of creative technicians dedicated to re-directing the techniques, tools, and tenets of industry, science, and the military away from their typical manifestations in practicality, product or warfare. Since 1979, SRL has staged over 45 mechanized presentations in the United States and Europe. Each performance consists of a unique set of ritualized interactions between machines, robots, and special effects devices, employed in developing themes of socio-political satire. Humans are present only as audience or operators.

History

SRL was founded by Mark Pauline in November, 1978.

Through late 2006, SRL has conducted 48 shows throughout the world, mostly in the Western United States. SRL shows are essentially performance art installations acted out by machines rather than people. The interactions between the machines are usually noisy, violent, and destructive. A frequent tag-line on SRL literature is "Producing the most dangerous shows on Earth". A side effect of the group's activities is frequent interactions with governmental and legal authorities.

Early performances featured animal skins and cadavers animated by mechanical endoskeletons while more recent performances feature some large and technically advanced robots that reflect a paranoid militaristic imagination. In the SRL workshop, a high value is placed on found or re-purposed materials and machines. An example is the The Big Arm which is a telemetrically controlled robot made from an abandoned back-hoe which drags itself around by its "arm".

SRL is considered to be the pioneer of industrial performing arts.^{[citation needed]} Many SRL members are also involved in other avant garde artistic projects such as the Cacophony Society, the Suicide Club, The Haters, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Robochrist Industries, People Hater, Seemen, Burning Man and robotics projects like Battlebots and Robot Wars.

List of SRL devices

SRL devices are usually given interesting names, such as the Flame Hurricane, the Large Shock Wave Cannon and the Hand o God. Their performances are also given colorful names, such as The Unexpected Destruction of Elaborately Engineered Artifacts and Survival Research Laboratories Contemplates A Million Inconsiderate Experiments.

Names include:

• Flame Hurricane
• The V1 - a replica of a WWII V1 engine
• Hand-O'-God - a giant spring-loaded hand, cocked by an air cylinder
• The Pitching Machine - a device which fires 2x4 pieces of lumber
• Shockwave Cannon - a device which fires a shockwave of air, shattering glass remotely with the force, constructed similarly to the shockwave-based Wunderwaffen anti-bomber device or the so-called hail cannon.
• Wheelocopter - a spinning machine which applies the principles of rotorcraft to a two-dimensional plane
• Six-Legged Running Machine
• High Pressure Air Launcher - originally developed by NASA for use in avalanche control; fires beer cans filled with plaster using a CO2 charge

External links

• SRL website