Mechatronic Circus

The machines created by artist Fernando Palma Rodriguez are curious characters both fallible and temperamental. Their mechanical and electronic mechanisms are prone to unforeseen glitches demanding the artist’s continuing attention – well beyond their initial design, construction and programming. This relationship between the artist and his machines mirrors the relationship of dependency that the world has entered into with technology.
Mechatronic Circus contributes to that artistic tradition, from Da Vinci to twentieth century technological euphoria, displaying a fascination with the machine and its possibilities. Incorporated within it, however, is an awareness of the landscape and environment, one with perhaps hybrid origins in the artist’s own culture on the one hand and, ultimately, the western Romantic tradition on the other. From his more global perspective at the beginning of the new millennium, Rodriguez encourages us to engage with, and thereby claim ownership of, the new technological environment.