From: rteasdal@polyslo.csc.calpoly.edu (Rusty)
Subject: SRL Show Report
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 92 18:32:14 GMT
Organization: Cal Poly State Univ,CSC Dept,San Luis Obispo,CA 93407
Summary: Mass confusion and violence 
Keywords: death destruction sex robotics noise


[ Author's note: the following is a review of the 4/8/92 SRL performance
in SF. It was originally written for a site newsgroup, and someone here
requested that I crosspost to r.m.i., commenting that there are a great
many SRL fans who read this group. My apologies for the small amount of
personal or site-specific text remaining in the article; time didn't 
permit its removal. I don't normally read r.m.i, so replies or flames, if  
any, should come by email.   - Rusty ]


	Okay, as promised, here's the official Punk Fact-Finding
Commission Report on the Activities of Survival Research Laboratories:

	SRL, for those of you who don't know, is an outfit which
specializes in a unique form of performance art. Their shows consist of
various machines built out of junk which attack and destroy each other
in an atmosphere of violent noise and confusion. There are some who say
that there's a deeper statement about society implicit in SRL's work.
Others see only a group of mad monk machinists blowing things up for
fun. In any event, the group is headquartered in SF, and has been in
erratic operation since '79. Its titular head is Mark Pauline, who has
a right hand with two fingers and three toes on it, since he blew off
the thumb and the rest of the fingers while experimenting with rocket
fuels a few years ago.

	The shows have names like "Epidemic of Fear" and "Penetrating
Roots of Madness". They have been largely banned in SF by the municipal
authorities for the last couple of years, and Pauline has been doing
shows in Europe, where he is rightly regarded as a genius. In any case,
this show was called "Sexualized War". It was mounted under the aegis of
SFMOMA/SOMA, the SF Museum of Modern Art, South of Market Branch, for its
grand opening. The MOMA decided they wanted a big show so they called SRL;
the monied socialites on the board of MOMA had enough clout to force the
Safety Nazis in the police and fire and public health departments to go
away, fortunately.

	We showed up for the performance at about ten. It was in a big
empty parking lot at the corner of Third and Howard in SF, across from
Moscone Center. The area was fenced off with chainlink, and there were
a number of strange structures inside. At the street end were a number
of small apparatus which looked like antiaircraft guns - at the other,
a number of weird-looking structures made out of papier-mache, cardboard,
plate glass, and the like. We (Pam, Tracey, and I) hung around for an 
hour or so as the crowd got got larger and larger. P&T got ringside
seats by the fence, I climbed a garbage can with a stop sign planted in
it for a better view. Various loud noises went off from time to time,
and we could see the SRL crews (about fifty people) tuning up their
implements of destruction in the background. We saw two cool devices
being tested: one was a high-pressure pump which fired long jets of a
snotty green slime over targets. Another was a long-barrelled gun which
was under some sort of remote control. We later learned that it was an
electromagnetic cannon slaved to a head-up display on a helmet worn by
Mark Pauline. On command (a blink?) it would discharge some very large
capacitors and liquefy an aluminum ingot, magnetically ejecting the
glowing hot glob at very high speed. I am told that this tends to set
everything on fire in the vicinity of what it strikes, since the globs
fragment on impact into very many tiny red-hot blobs. Pauline says that
this cannon is SRL's answer to George Bush's call for a thousand points
of light :-)

	I was disappointed, by the way, that they didn't bring the
Rabot. This is a dead, dessicated rabbit, with its eyes replaced by red
blinking LEDs, mounted in a cybernetic walking frame. Apparently they
like to send it for strolls through the crowd for people to pet. Or not.

	Everything was going swimmingly as we counted down to showtime,
except for two things. First, there were some jerks on the building whose
back wall abutted the performance area. They had to be shouted down since
the risks of permitting them to stay in the cannons' line of fire were too
great. Eventually it was to transpire that the cannons could not be
fired full blast during the performance since the jerks came back and
interposed themselves in the line of fire trying to get a better view.
I personally would have said "You were warned" and blasted them with the
electro cannon. The other impediment was the SF Fire Department. They
showed up about fifteen minutes to zero hour and started saying some
extremely aggrieved things about permits. Apparently Pauline showed 
them the mayor's signature on the documents and told them to go to hell
(he was cited afterwards for the uncontrolled fire that started, though).

	We were all warned ahead of time that we should wear some ear
protection (and a damned good thing). All of us stuffed our ears with
whatever was handy and waited for Armageddon. It started with a siren
wail, probably a left-over air raid siren. A huge metal whirligig only
about one meter from Pam and Tracey began to spin at high speed and
hum ominously. At this point I began to worry about their safety (well,
okay, Pam's safety :-) Behind the motley assemblage of flimsy huts, a
hydraulic device began to vigourously shake a large billboard-like
structure hidden by blue plastic. The plastic fell to the ground, and
a huge mural of explicit sex acts was revealed to all. Meanwhile, the  
first of the robots were starting to appear.

	The one nearest us at first was a small round one made of some
kind of corrugated metal. It scooted over towards one of the structures
apparently displaying curiosity. It turned tail, though, because a huge
robot arm came out of the building and began to pull it apart, working
to free itself. (Later we found out that the arm was on a mobile robot
which went SOL at the last minute on mobility, so they had it wreck what
it happened to be close to at that moment.) The little round one ran away
and I lost sight of it after that. Then, in among the huts, a six-legged
walking robot began to move. It had a single mannequin arm projecting
forward as if to say "Hi, howareya?" The handler, who was close, had some
difficulty getting it to maneuver out into the open, but it finally
managed the trick.

	As soon as it did so, there was a huge mechanial bellow from
behind the huts, and the Shock Wave Cannon emerged. The Cannon is just
that - a huge cannon barrel on a wheeled cart, with a huge propane tank.
It has a big V-8 auto engine on the back. As the Cannon emerged, it
fired for the first time. 

	I can't describe what it was like. The newspaper this morning
says that it's a WWII surplus V-1 pulse jet engine (which I don't for
a moment believe). I think it's a concussion chamber device built in
the SRL shop. In any case, it is thunderously loud. You feel more than
hear it fire - there is a physical shock wave which rattles your guts
in your ribs. A roundish object flew out of the barrel and across the
lot (a bloody animal brain). Then the Cannon belched fire! A lot of
fire, followed by thick black smoke, then another massive concussion.
The walking robot ran like a deer (figuratively, it's slow) as the
Cannon pivoted out to give chase.

	Meanwhile, a new robot emerged. There was a papier-mache fish
tethered to the fence. A little robot about the size of a Bobcat mini
loader tore its way out of the fish with snapping lobster claws that
looked like they started life lifting logs onto trucks. It headed for  
the nearest cardboard and plate glass hut and started to demolish it
with the claws. As it did so, jugs of pig blood fell off the hut roof
and splattered everywhere, including, I think, the nearer of the crowd
members. A giant mushroom cap on top of the roof raised to reveal a
giant face twisted in a painful grimace as the building was wrecked.

	The cannons were firing at the Cannon but could not stop it.
It fired a few more times at the walker and then (this was where I
said "Oh, shit, I shouldn't have come") pivoted to face straight at
where we were standing, at about twenty meter range, which is DAMN
CLOSE as far as this thing's concerned. It fired straight at us and
the shock wave slapped the sign by my head into me and nearly blew
me off my perch. I ducked as it fired again, fearing that it might
shoot another brain at us. Pam and Tracey looked my way and saw that
the windows of the big Wells Fargo building behind us (packed with
every employee in the building) were quivering, bowing in and out
like plastic sheeting in a high wind as the shock wavefronts hit.
Then it fired the flamethrower directly at us with a huge and
terrifying whoosh. I felt the heat pulse, that "too close to the
fireplace" sensation, on my exposed skin (and P&T were about fifteen
feet closer than I was!). Meanwhile, the huge concert speakers were
pumping out a litany of howls, screams, moans, and maniacal laughter,
and foghorns were honking at top volume to keep the beat up.

	We got blasted and flamed a few more times and then the Cannon
swivelled away and backed up. I saw what it was doing - some of the
newsie photographers had come sneaking into the designated performance
area (killing ground?) in search of good shots (an SRL no-no). The
Cannon bellowed and ran straight at them, blasting concussion pulses
and breathing fire. The news hounds ran like bandits! It was great!
Near where the photogs got outside the fence, there was something	
moving under a paper camouflage wrapper that looked like a big pink
tit. The Cannon went over and gave it a long flamethrower burst at
close range, and the paper all burned off (looking, I swear, EXACTLY
like the Hindenburg in flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey) the outer
skeleton of the robot underneath. That robot went wacko and ran into
the fence, bowing it out and stalling. The walker ran around behind it
and escaped the Cannon (although it did get covered with ugly goo
from the snot gun).

	While all this was going on, there was a weird building at
center stage. It was round, made of corrugated siding, and it had a
box of some sort on top, and a huge metal funnel in the side, oriented
horizontally. There was a roar from a big fan, and a nylon balloon came
out of the box, and partially inflated. Its weight and the wind pulled it
over to one side, though, so it couldn't come to full size (it would have
been fantastic if it did, considering what happened next. The Cannon
"noticed" this activity atop the building, backed up with a rumble, and
ran straight for the funnel, sticking its barrel all the way inside the
building (the crude sexual metaphor will not, I trust, have been lost
on you). It fired the pulse blast once, which shook the whole building 
and blew metal shrapnel off the sides, and then shot a long tongue of
flame down the funnel, up through the roof of the place, and lit the nylon
balloon canopy alight, casuing it to burn like a torch! With the big
stationary Godzilla arm in the background, demolishing its own building,
and the XXX-rated mural behind it, it was an awesome sight.

	All was not well with the Lobster, meanwhile. It had brought
down enough of the supports of the building on which it had been working
that the heavy roof caved in on it unanticipatedly. The Cannon withdrew
from the burning balloon nest and came over to help. It blasted the
wood and cardboard structure with pulses a couple of times, to no avail,
and then a terrible mistake was made. It flamed the building with the
Lobster still stuck inside. The highly flammable construction began to
burn fiercely, with an expensive robot under its roof and a crowd of
spectators about ten deep not four meters from the closest point. This
was a showstopper. The firing stopped and the SRL fire crews came in
to try to free the robot. The fire was seemingly unstoppable, though.
They used up a number of fire extinguishers with no luck. The SFFD men
stepped in at last and called for an engine, which couldn't get to the
site quickly enough through the crush. By the time it arrived and the
Lobster was extinguished with foam, it was pretty well burnt out.

	And that was that. It was an incredible, very scary experience,
and I'd do it again at a moment's notice. This was a first-person account
from memory, and no doubt Pam and Tracey will want to add some of their
observations of things I missed, and there may be some small inaccuracies
as to the precise sequence of events (the whole show in all its violent
glory lasted less than ten minutes). But it should give some idea of what
we went through and survived... I'll post copies of the SF Chronicle's
coverage of the event in the CSL tomorrow for those who want to read them.
Oh, and we have photographs! Including one looking right into the dragon's
mouth of the Shock Wave Cannon - we'll have those for public scrutiny too.



-- 
||||||||   Russ Teasdale -- rteasdal@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU  --  (Rusty)  ||||||||
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"Gentlemen, if we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure." - D. Quayle