Breakdown: Mechanical Dysfunction and Anthropomorphism is a practice-led
research project examining the role of mechanical breakdown in the
anthropomorphic process. Current theoretical approaches to mechanical breakdown
identify it as a homogenous, revelatory event “a sort of breach opened up by
objects.” (Baudrillard, 2004: 62). Breakdown challenges this stereotyping and seeks
to examine the range of gesture and affect that differing forms of mechanical
breakdown exhibit. In doing so it also develops Sherry Turkle’s notion of
anthropomorphism as a connective rather than ascriptive process (2005: 351) in the
light of Karen Barad’s “performative account of material bodies” (2007: 139).
Leading this research is Breakdown, the making, remaking, exhibition and reexhibition
of 36 breaking-machines. These breaking-machines; simple mechanical
devices made from reconfigured found materials; approach breakdown and fail
during their exhibition. They are then repaired or reconfigured by the artist ‘live’
while still on show. Throughout the research this role of the artist as repairman
became a key method. The continual recombination of human and machine
responding to the call of breakdown allowed for a more detailed understanding of
the gestures of mechanical breakdown. This performative relationship considers the
posthuman decentring of the Vitruvian man in the writing of Rosi Braidotti (2013:
2) and Karen Barad’s agential realism (Barad, 2007: 44) both of which insist that the
human, rather than bounded and individual, be considered as part of a dispersed
network of interacting parts.
The thesis begins by investigating the performative relationship of Breakdown in
detail. It describes a machine-human body that is materialised fleetingly by
mechanical dysfunction. Through an intimate relationship with one machine, it then
goes on to identify a typology of breakdown: seize, play, burnout and cutting loose,
concluding that each emits differing expanding and contracting forces around which
bodies disperse and coalesce. Finally, employing the flicker of a thaumatrope and
the making of the science fiction film robot, the thesis posits that anthropomorphism
is an integral element in the dissipation and reformation of human-machine bodies