Genuine Survival Research Labs

Survival Research Laboratories is a performance art group founded in November 1978, by Mark Pauline (born ), in San Francisco, California. It stages conceptual art created with heavy industrial machinery and “reappropriated” military machinery with robotics technology.
==Personal lives==
===Mark===
In high school, Mark built motorcycles, and crashed them. His first job was at an ironworks.
After graduation he worked as a subcontractor at an Air Force Base, maintaining target robots. He thought it was “cool that [he was] building this thing that weighs 30 tons and goes down the railroad tracks and someone’s going to shoot at it," "but ultimately people are killing people with it. That’s the purpose of it. The purpose is to exterminate people with it.”
He later attended , an art school in St. Petersburg, Florida. After graduating in 1977, Mark moved to San Francisco, and started a project of defacing billboards.
Mark is married and has a son.
==Machines and Performances==
Survival Research Laboratories originated and developed the concept of large-scale machine performance. Mark aimed to merge visual arts and mechanical engineering, in a form of pseudo performance art. It took him two weeks to devise their basic form. He describes his shows as providing an "extreme experience -- as close as you can get to danger."
Mark told the website that he enjoys “wasting technology,” and taking “something that’s really practical and do[ing] something ridiculous with it.”
Survival Research Laboratories performances are often given elaborate bureaucratic titles, satirising academic research papers. Examples include “The Unexpected Destruction of Elaborately Engineered Artifacts, Survival Research Laboratories Contemplates a Million Inconsiderate Experiments.” Performances include flamethrowers, dynamite, catapults, sirens, floodlights, and roadkill. In 1997, Survival Research Laboratories began using the programming language for "telerobotic systems."
SRL claims that its Running Machine is the world’s fastest leg-powered machine.
In June 2002, Survival Research Laboratories gave a performance at the .
In January 2018, Mark showcased his first project in the institutional art world; his Pitching Machine. This was a projectile that throws wooden planks up to 200 miles per hour into a bulletproof container. The following August, he attended the Seattle Art Fair.
==History==
The name Survival Research Laboratories came from an advertisement in , a right-wing mercenary magazine. After the advertisement ran, the editor of the magazine wrote an article about how they had been defrauded by fake advertisers. Mark made Survival Research Laboratories into a company, as he sees them as “the entities that really got away with anything," and “the true outlaws."
The first SRL show, titled Machine Sex, opened on Sunday, February 25, 1979, at a service station in . Mark did not have permission from anyone, including the owner. The De-Manufacturing Machine’s components were taken from a brewery. A conveyor belt has attached to a high-speed fan, topped with a Plexiglas bubble. Anything conveyed into the spinning blades would be "de-manufactured" to pieces, briefly entering the transparent dome before falling back down. The machine threw dead pigeons, dressed as dignitaries into the audience. In 2011, The De-Manufacturing Machine was included in an exhibition at , in Los Angeles.
In the early 1980s Eric Werner and Matt Heckert joined SRL. Matt left after nine years. As of 2018, Survival Research Laboratories has around forty collaborators.
In 2008, Survival Research Laboratories moved to , having felt unwelcome in San Francisco. In Petaluma, Survival Research Laboratories operates out of three garages.
==Injuries==
An attendant, who had signed a liability waiver, complained to staff of numerous injuries suffered at an event, and received the response that injuries were expected.
In 1982, Mark lost his right hand trying to make solid rocket fuel. Two of his toes were removed, and attached to the stump. This incident is known as The Birth of the Gimp Hand.
==Legal issues==
In August 1990, a show was cancelled after Mark solicited Bibles for use as "heat shielding." In response, Survival Research Laboratories filed a federal lawsuit, eventually settling for a cash payment.
Local authorities have raised concerns over fire safety.
In 1995, SRL was banned from San Francisco by the fire department after they criticised it. The mayor allowed a few shows after 1995.
Survival Research Labs was banned for a second time in 2012.
==References==
Category:Art YouTubers
Category:Tech YouTubers
Category:American YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2011