They rise to their full height of 9 feet and proceed to circle on their rotating platform and jab each other with sticks, elicit sparks instead of blood or bruises. Robots, carnival and apocalypse are dominant motifs in San Francisco underground art, but the art at the Omnicircus seems more sophisticated than, say, the fighting machines of Survival Research Laboratories. This is going to be perceived one day as a renaissance. But a lot of people who do mechanical performance are working from an adolescent perspective, making spectacles of destruction. I ask Garvey whether robotic sculpture is a movement in the sense that, say, surrealist painting was.
Surrealist painting is great, but robotic sculpture represents an evolutionary leap.
When sculpture wakes up in the morning and brushes its teeth and goes down to the museum and demands to be shown, that's evolution. Omnicircus is located at 550 Natoma St., between Mission and Howard and Sixth and Seventh streets. The entrance is on Russ Street. Nov. 20, Ali Khan Band, a world-fusion group and Nov. 21, Daniel Berkman's African Kora music. Admission is by sliding-scale donation.