wsa photosculpture apparatus @ csm

Many of the mechanical monsters produced in the nineteenth century still sur­vive today-machines without a nervous system of their own, constantly requiring the assistance of a human partner. Developments in the use of electricity, and above all the rise of electrOniCS, taking place less than a century after the mutation that pro­duced automotive machines, have triggered another mutation that leaves but little in the human organism still to be exteriorized. Machines have changed radically as a result of the development of small-scale motors, photosensitive cells, transistors, and miniaturized devices of all kinds. This disparate arsenal is supplying the parts for a composite body strangely similar to the biological one. Whereas nineteenth­ century machines with their voluminous energy sources conducted a single force to blindly acting organs via extensive transmission systems, today's machinery with its multiple sources of energy is leading to something like a real muscular system, con­ trolled by a real nervous system, performing complex operating programs through its connections with something like a real sensory-motor brain.

Leroi-Gorhan / Gesture & Speech