Andrew Carson & Shelly Corbett

What exactly is interactive art? How do I blend mechanics and aesthetics? How are my original notions affected by the outside world? Am I isolated, or am I part of a comfortable genre? These are the questions I have pondered throughout my artistic career. Born in Boulder Colorado in 1962, I began to experiment with the tools I still use today at a very young age. Each year of maturity brings me more motivation to mine my past, sometime very distant past, for clues to my future. My palette includes electronics, illustration, the camera, and mechanical systems, all woven together to interact with the spirit of the human being.I personally execute every step of my process, which includes design, engineering, prototyping, metal cutting, pounding and finishing as well as glass and cement casting. I have an assistant that helps with sanding as well as shipping.Every one of my designs starts in a rough sketch on a napkin or the backside of a discarded piece of paper. A good sketch begets a good piece, and over time when I am looking to do something new, I look to my piles of sketches and execute from the most intriguing. From there I work digitally. Sizing the parts, figuring the mechanics, reflecting the rotations and clearances. When the design is done I break this digital sketch up into pieces and print them at full scale. From this stage I drill and cut the parts and begin to assemble the final piece. There are no “found parts” in my work. I design and make every piece, including the glass balls, the hubs and the transitions.It is not easy to weave functionality with form. Not many of the things I dream are realized, and not every realization matches the rough concept in style and grace. Embarking on each new project destroys my fantasy of its ideal potential; replacing it with a reality that can be frighteningly vivid or painfully dull. There is no book I refer to. I create my original pieces today, based on the cruder ones I made yesterday.