He has also been commissioned to build automatons based on customers’ ideas. In one instance, Dug work up in the middle of the night with an idea already fully formed. Dug’s ideas sometimes start with characters which inspire the story of a piece other times, Dug decides to build a scene around a particular mechanism he wants to use. A favorite theme for Dug is magic tricks, and he has created two pieces featuring an automaton magician performing a trick. Dug uses the appearance and motion of the figures in his pieces, as well as the titles of the pieces, to tell the story which is taking place within their little wooden worlds. One of Dug’s primary focuses is the storytelling aspect of automata, which is made complicated by the limited number of elements able to communicate to the viewer-similar to one-panel cartoons. Although Dug’s automata are built to refresh their technology-saturated viewers, certain technologies have served to bring together automata creators from all corners of the globe.Ī view of his workshop, showing the variety of tools Dug uses on his automata. The artists who have influenced Dug hail from a number of different countries: Paul Spooner, of the UK Pablo Lavezzari, of Argentina Pierre Mayer, of France and Thomas Kuntz, of the United States. Drawn by the intrigue and cleverness of the automata he saw, and by the combination of technical and artistic elements involved in creating automata, Dug decided to begin making his own in spite of having little previous experience with woodworking. Dug’s interest in automata was born around 2002 after he stumbled upon the website of the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre, a group of automata artists largely based in the United Kingdom. Perhaps somewhat ironically, it is the modern innovation of the Internet which has enabled automaton-makers from around the world to connect with one another and form an international community. Devoid of the frustrations and bugs that often accompany contemporary devices, Dug’s work is just as captivating as those objects.ĭug shows off some of the clocks he has restored
Dug’s wooden automata are meant in part to be objects with which people can have a much more familiar relationship: their mechanisms are visible and operate by the turn of a crank, allowing the person interacting with the piece to both activate and understand its workings. In his own work, Dug aspires to use simple non-synthetic materials to create pieces without wiring or circuitry, built to last for generations, existing for no purpose besides providing amusement and wonder. By Abigail Brubakerĭug North’s artist statement begins, “We have become distanced from the things that surround us.” He goes on to discuss the present state of people in industrialized nations, who own many pieces of mass-produced technology but do not understand how these objects work and have nothing to do with their creation. the Minotaur is an elaborate mechanical machine.
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