Dual Pneuma

Dual Pneuma is a soft-robotic performer evoking a humanoid body with four limbs that allow for a transition from quadrupedal to organic form and motion. Composed of inflatable, high-tensile fabric muscles, the artwork is capable of assuming a wide range of human, animal, and insect-like positions.

MacMurtrie is additionally developing a series of ceramic works cast directly from the soft-robotic figure. Compressed air will be channeled through the ceramic sculptures to produce whistling sounds, sonifying the artwork in reference to the water and wind-based huaco instruments of early Mesoamerican cultures.

Dual Pneuma continues MacMurtrie’s exploration of Chicanx Futurismo. Its hybrid state speaks to Gloria Anzaldúa’s understanding of the mestiza object, or spiritual crossbreed, speculating beyond binaristic border politics and criticizing larger systems of gender, technology, and power.

Dual Pneuma was made possible with support from the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology, Creative Capital, and Getty. The software development was supported by MacMurtrie’s long-time collaborator Bill Bowen as well as Michael T. Tolley, Ph.D., Associate Professor at UCSD’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Bioinspired Robotics and Design Lab, and his graduate students Shenglin Yan and Allyson Chen. Support for modeling an alternative control system was received from R. Luke Dubois, director of the Brooklyn Experimental Media Center at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and his graduate student Checo Cadena. MacMurtrie further collaborated with Fabricio Cavero, a Ph.D. candidate at UCI, to sonify the terracotta sculptures and with Hugo de Souza Kolsky, M.F.A. candidate at Cooper Union, on inflatables and clay.