Mean Machine
Gruesome Scene
Turn Ya Green
Mark Pauline
SURVIVAL RESEARCH LABS
"The police
were extremely
disturbed..."
by Harry Moss
M
ark Pauline is a proud father showing off
his latest brainchild. He rests a maimed
right hand on a wheeled electronic
R2-D2 look-alike with a barrel-wide mouth that
he describes as a molten metal shotgun.
"It's got high voltage capacitors in it from a military laser
experiment for the Star Wars program," says Pauline in-
nocently. "I was able to get a hold of them really cheap
from somebody."
As usual he is careful not to reveal sources, even for elec-
tronic condensers. As he cuts a ten-inch piece of heavy
TIG welding rod, thick wire about half the size of your little
finger, and clamps it into place, he explains the process.
"These rods have a lot of carbon in them, which tends
to have more resistance, so they vaporize better." His tone
is casual, as if he were telling you how to bake a cake.
"What this tube does is focus the molten metal into a
ball and eject it out at about 10,000 G-forces. If you aim
it out the front door it goes about 50 feet past that telephone
pole at about 250 miles an hour." He proceeds to aim it
at the wall.
Then he flips a switch and adjusts a couple knobs while
Mo and I stand well back. It takes maybe eight seconds
to build up the charge, then wham! A spray of sparks fills
the air, covering a four-foot area of the room. The rod has
disappeared, gone, gone, gone, and the whitewashed wall
is peppered with black spots. All in the name of art.
Pauline heads San Francisco-based Survival Research
Laboratories. He operates out of 6,000 feet of warehouse
and living space crammed with the tools and machines
which fabricate the devices he uses in his shows. Parts
that ought to have no possible use to anyone lie
everywhere, dangle from the ceiling or lounge on shelves.
A whirlybird made from a motorcycle is suspended from
a cable in one corner of the room and a grotesque black
head "That's Mister Satan," Pauline explains when I
ask-bobs on a pole nearby.
This year SRL will make its second European tour,
transporting thirty tons of material to England and the Con-
tinent to practice their custom brand of artistic terrorism.
Pauline makes machines that drill or bounce or try to
fly; that bump into each other and sometimes throw rotten
fruit at the audience. His devices are autonomous, random-
ly running around on their own, or remote controlled and
directed at certain tasks. The walker is two tons of moving
metal George Lucas might have devised. There are things
that move projectiles through the air and a shock wave can-
non that knocks over shacks. There are various catapults,
lots of different flame throwers and plenty of rockets in
Pauline's shows.
"Then you have some kind of sound in the background
and props," he says, filling in the blanks. "The props are
usually very simple machines, sometimes (Continued on page 106)
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