Galo Moncayo

Untitled (drawing machine)

Two arcs, each with many magnets, sweep from side to side. As the arcs move, their magnetic fields move the metal arms that hold each drawing implement. The arms bounce inside frames creating etching-like drawings. 

Sin título (máquina de dibujo)

Dos arcos, cada uno con varios magnetos, se balancean de lado a lado gracias a sus campos magnéticos que a su vez, impulsan los brazos de metal que sostienen cada implemento de dibujo. Los brazos se desplazan dentro de un perímetro cuadrado creando dibujos, tipo bocetos.

Freestyle wandering machine

research project with Dominik Strzelec

Driven by its immediate surrounding, little by little, the machine deposits material while sensing and moving within its territory. Traces left by its passing alter the landscape it operates within, step by step. Instant decisions solidify, aggregate and therefore shift or constrain its possible future trajectories.

Moving away from industrial precision towards almost primitive  - still digitally mediated  - ways of constructing and articulating the space, poses a question whether material traces of networked culture have to be highly technological. Matter, whether tangible or virtual, becomes a medium of record. Since there is no other blueprint than the behavior itself, resulting shapes gain their specificity from tool resolution, medium fidelity and saturation of generative processes, leaving them as traces. 

http://echoechonoisenoise.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/freestyle-wandering-maschine/

So far I do not know

In this installation of over 20 speakers, each speaker is filled with pigment that is slowly forced up on the speaker walls by sound waves emitted by the speaker and caused by a programmed control board. Unlike Moncayo’s other works that create instantaneously perceptible results, the pigment in the speakers travels in micro-movements, over time creating anthill-like trails up the speaker walls. 

So far I do not know

En esta instalación, de más de 20 bocinas, el artista ha depositado pigmentos que lentamente son impulsados por ondas de sonido a través de las paredes de las bocinas. Dichas ondas se originan en una superficie de control, programada. A diferencia de otros trabajos de Moncayo, que ofrecen resultados palpables y al instante, aquí los pigmentos en las bocinas se desplazan en micro-movimientos que al paso del tiempo crean pequeños caminos, similares a los que forman las hormigas.

Worlds apart

in collaboration with Andy Holtin

Andy Holtin and Galo Moncayo, working together as CausalityLabs, create works that explore the nature of the world through a kind of mechanical theater with humor and mimicry. Their collective works dig into materials and events to get at our notions of meaning, sequence, and cause and effect.

View

in collaboration with Andy Holtin

Andy Holtin and Galo Moncayo, working together as CausalityLabs, create works that explore the nature of the world through a kind of mechanical theater with humor and mimicry. Their collective works dig into materials and events to get at our notions of meaning, sequence, and cause and effect.

Brisa

A handcrafted windmill is installed in one area of the space; thirty feet away, plastic boats stand at varying heights. The windmill and boats are connected electronically, though the wires are concealed. The viewer blows into the windmill at one end of the space. At the other end, the boats sway in the “wind” created by the viewer’s breath—quickly at first with the first burst of breath and more slowly as the windmill slows down. 

Lejos

in collaboration with Zuzana Ernst

Blurry trees ahead 

Far away from my body 

Out into distance            

         (Nathan Rubio)

We all need a creation myth

in collaboration with Andy Holtin

Andy Holtin and Galo Moncayo, working together as CausalityLabs, create works that explore the nature of the world through a kind of mechanical theater with humor and mimicry. Their collective works dig into materials and events to get at our notions of meaning, sequence, and cause and effect.

Enjoy the Ride 

A small fan, attached to a small speaker, is suspended from the ceiling. As the fan turns on, the momentum forces the fan/speaker to move. Each speaker emits the sound of a child giggling. As the fan/speaker flies in circles, it laughs and enjoys the ride. 

Search

dialogo

comercio

politica

familia

guerra

juego

comunicacion

simpatia

contacto

intercambio

burocracia

conexion

amistad…

This piece consists of a population of small flashlights that are operated by an electromechanical system that allows them to rotate, swivel up and down, and turn on and off. Each singular unit is mounted atop one of thirty pillars ranging in height from 34” to 74”. The microprocessor system that controls the movement of the unit also contains a photosensitive electric eye which, when directly lit by the light from another flashlight unit, switches the receiving unit off if it is on, or alternatively, on if it is off. The units are also able to respond to the total amount of light in the surrounding space, moving faster as the ambient light decreases. This allows the entire population to slow its movement as more of the lights become activated, making interaction between the units more active.

Each unit is then able to speak and to listen, to see and be seen. Although they are constructed with roughly identical physical details, each unit has a tendency to develop its own personality and relationships with other units in the space. Generated from a desire to create a population of individuals that is able to communicate, in a limited fashion, information about their presence or absence to the rest of the group, this individualized interaction is what moves the installation from simply being a set of on/off switches to being an investigation of the way that we as people interpret the behaviors of others, whether human or machine. Watching this population of responsive entities is a way of watching ourselves, seeing our assumptions and biases, our means of interpreting behavior and communications. As do nearly all works of art, this full range of mechanical units in constant communication and exchange, becomes a kind of self-portrait, a way in which we step back from ourselves in order to better understand. For this reason, the titling selected is intended to make possible all interpretations that can be brought to bear in the viewer’s experience of the piece in the same way that our own interactions are invariably colored by the contexts we bring to them.