From: ryans@yang.earlham.edu
Newsgroups: rec.music.industrial
Subject: Re: SRL Show Report
Date: 17 Apr 92 06:37:15 GMT
Organization: Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana

In article <1992Apr10.183214.20246@rat.csc.calpoly.edu>, rteasdal@polyslo.csc.calpoly.edu (Rusty) writes:
> 
> [ 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)  ||||||||
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Gentlemen, if we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure." - D. Quayle