November 2004

A self-described mad scientist and idiot savant, Kal Spelletich has been wowing audiences for more than 15 years with interactive machine art that he says, &"could kill you but would preferably empower you." He documents and sometimes operates his innovations on Macs, including his current G4.

The artist lists among his influences Leonardo da Vinci, punk rock, and the carnival, and it shows. His contraptions confound logic and the imagination, and include a lie detector with a halo of fire, and the interactive robot, &"Monkey On Your Back," worn as a backpack and operated by flex, tilt, and EKG sensors in the attached gloves.

Spelletich and his collaborative artists and inventors call themselves SEEMEN, and have performed throughout the U.S. and Europe at art institutions and underground venues since their inception in 1987 in Austin, Texas. They moved to San Francisco in 1990, and now operate out of Spelletich's warehouse in the Bayview District, doing what they call Post Industrial Folk Art, an integration of machines, sculpture, computers, and audience interaction.

The group is known for biomorphic machines that are triggered by bio input from volunteers hooked up via stress, voice, heart, respiration, or other monitors. The machines respond by spitting fireballs or creating other heart pounding spectacles in an exploration of the boundary between fear and play. By learning to control their body's output, volunteers learn to control the machines to which they are attached.

Spelletich explains that he is fascinated by this interface between the human body and machine. &"There's really not many people doing it, and I don't know anyone doing it on my freaky level," he says. Universities and other institutions researching this type of technology have outputs that are &"kind of lame," he says, &"like videos or blinking lights. Instead, I have a flamethrower, a robotic arm."

Spelletich likes to create robots based on colloquialisms, and is currently working on one called &"Hand to Mouth", &"which is essentially how I lived my whole life," he says. This creation will involve a robotic arm that stuffs pennies into its mouth in response to a breath sensor.