Survival Research Laboratories (SRL) is a machine performance art

Performance art

In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

 group credited for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine performance. After about 30 years in San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

, SRL spent most of 2008 moving to Petaluma, California

Petaluma, California

Petaluma is a city in Sonoma County, California, in the United States. In the 2010 Census the population was 57,941.Located in Petaluma is the Rancho Petaluma Adobe, a National Historic Landmark. It was built beginning in 1836 by General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, then Commandant of the San...

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Since its inception in 1978 SRL has operated as an organization of creative technicians and technical creatives 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

Mark Pauline

Mark Pauline is an American performance artist and inventor, best known as founder and director of Survival Research Labs. He is a 1977 graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida....

 in November, 1978. The first show was "Machine Sex" on 25 Feb 1979.

Throughout the 1980s Pauline was joined by a number of machine artists including Matt Heckert and Eric Werner. Matt Heckert's main work in the group centered around the acoustic and musical parts of performance. He left the group in 1988 to follow his musical interests, developing the award winning Mechanical Sound Orchestra (MSO) which has toured the USA and Europe extensively.

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; recent performances feature 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 Big Arm, a telemetrically controlled robot made from an abandoned back-hoe that drags itself around by its "arm."

SRL is considered to be the pioneer of industrial performing arts. Many SRL members are also involved in other avant-garde artistic projects such as the Cacophony Society

Cacophony Society

The Cacophony Society is “a randomly gathered network of free spirits united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society.” It was started in 1986 by surviving members of the now defunct Suicide Club of San Francisco....

, the Suicide Club, The Haters

The Haters

The Haters are a noise music and conceptual art troupe from the United States. Founded in 1979, they are one of the earliest and best-known acts in the modern noise scene...

, GX Jupitter-Larsen

GX Jupitter-Larsen

GX Jupitter-Larsen is an artist, based in Hollywood, California, who's been active in a number of underground art scenes since the late 1970s. Jupitter-Larsen has been involved in punk rock, mail art, cassette culture, the noise music scene, and zine culture...

, Robochrist Industries

Robochrist Industries

Robochrist Industries is a robotic performance art troupe most notably recognized for its performances in and around Los Angeles during the years 1997 - 2005. The performances feature large radio-controlled robots moving among and eventually destroying props and set-pieces intended to convey...

, People Hater, Seemen, Burning Man

Burning Man

Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event starts on the Monday before the American Labor Day holiday, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening...

, and robotics projects such as Battlebots

BattleBots

BattleBots is an American company that hosts robot competitions. BattleBots is also the name of the television show created from the competition footage. BattleBots Inc...

 and Robot Wars

Robot Wars (TV series)

Robot Wars is a British game show modelled on a US-based competition of the same name. It was broadcast on BBC Two from 1998 until 2003, with its final series broadcast on Five in 2003 and 2004. Additional series were filmed for specific sectors of the global market, including two series of Robot...

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SRL has been praised as being one place where many women have had access to machine workshops. Rumours abound of a RE-Search book in preparation; events have been held discussing this theme.

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
  Hail cannon
  A hail cannon is a shock wave generator claimed to disrupt the formation of hailstones in the atmosphere.These devices frequently engender conflict between farmers and neighbors when used, because they are repeatedly fired every 1 to 10 seconds over the period when a storm is approaching and until...
  
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• 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