ARIEL COOKE

 "Limb From Limb" speaks to the self-awareness and control a machine requires to avoid destruction at the hands of a human, and to the mechanisms of chance that allow a machine to thrive through self-destruction. It’s refusal to function in the presence of a human is meant to irritate the human’s desire to interfere and manipulate. The name is born from a phrase of the same wording which indicates that parts or members from a body are torn apart to cause dismemberment and destruction. In this case, parts are torn out of the whole, yet in the machine’s eyes, it is not whole until it has become completely destroyed. In an act of reverse creation, the white veil of uniformity is torn to reveal intricate material relationships and a mechanical skeleton. The piece is a commentary on the destruction caused by anthropocentric philosophies. This object, made by humans, desires destruction, but not at the hands of its creator. 

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