Golan Levin: Welcome back to Shall Make, Shall Be. Our next speak­er is Andy Malone. Andy Malone holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Detroit Mercy, has worked in the exhib­it design and cus­tom fur­ni­ture indus­try for over twenty-five years. Notable clients of Andy Malone’s include Google, Twitch, Konami, Salesforce, Dolby, LG, Dodge, HP, T‑Mobile, and Bethesda Games. His playable sculp­tures and games have been shown in over seventy-five exhi­bi­tions since 1995 includ­ing two recent solo exhi­bi­tions, Play Room, and Happy Accidents.

As a cura­tor of the game arts, Andy Malone has co-organized Game Show Detroit in 2006 at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, and Game Show New York City in 2011, at Columbia University. Malone also curat­ed the Bravo! Bravo! Art Exhibition at the Detroit Opera House in 2004 and 2005. Malone cur­rent­ly serves as Vice President of Hatch, an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary arts cen­ter in Hamtramck, Michigan.

Friends, please wel­come Andy Malone.

Andy Malone: Thank you very much. And thank you every­one for tun­ing in. So today I’m just going to talk very briefly about some of my past projects. And then hope­ful­ly that’ll pro­vide some con­text for my Second Amendment piece for the upcom­ing Shall Make, Shall Be show. 

So my name is Andy Malone and I make inter­ac­tive sculp­tures and games. For the most part, my work is intend­ed to be phys­i­cal­ly han­dled and manip­u­lat­ed. So by press­ing a but­ton or turn­ing a crank, draw­ing a pic­ture or mov­ing a game piece, the view­er engages with the work and they com­plete its purpose.

So I exhib­it in tra­di­tion­al gal­leries and muse­um spaces, but the work is intend­ed to be manip­u­lat­ed by the view­er. So to appre­ci­ate it, the view­er must break the first rule of most art spaces: do not touch. And it throws peo­ple off for a few sec­onds but soon they fig­ure it all out.

So the toy-like nature of my work can be sub­ver­sive. It draws the view­er in, and I actu­al­ly like to call the view­er the play­er, or the col­lab­o­ra­tor. But it also serves as an entry point for some more provoca­tive themes. So I strive to cre­ate some mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences through inter­ac­tion and community-building. 

So I was born on the West Side of Detroit in the 1970s. My mom was a teacher, my dad was a painter and illus­tra­tor. And in addi­tion to paint­ing and mak­ing my birth announce­ment, my dad drew a semi-regular com­ic strip that was pub­lished in Detroit and Atlanta. And his work was also fea­tured in an inter­na­tion­al col­lec­tion of car­toons, which he was often one of the few black car­toon­ists represented. 

So one of these books, it fea­tured a ret­ro­spec­tive of Rube Goldberg. And as a child I was fas­ci­nat­ed by his whim­si­cal chain reac­tion machines. Rube Goldberg made mech­a­nisms humor­ous and relat­able. And so this plant­ed seeds for my inter­est in tech­ni­cal draw­ings and artis­tic machines. 

[These fol­low­ing descrip­tions nar­rate the first ~1:42 of the above video.]

So I went to archi­tec­ture school, but I did not inher­it my dad’s draw­ing abil­i­ties. So I enjoyed mak­ing automa­ta and table­top games out of wood. And I called them playable sculp­tures. So these pro­to­type abstract strat­e­gy games were an attempt to inter­pret some the­o­ret­i­cal con­cepts in game mechan­ics and to explore how play­ers inter­act with the envi­ron­ment and each other. 

This video was cre­at­ed for a gallery that was exhibit­ing my games, and they want­ed to have some­thing on a loop next to it so that peo­ple could see how the game was played. So this par­tic­u­lar one’s called Meander, and the con­cept behind it is that every­one’s play­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. And they’re mov­ing their pieces simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, so they all need to be in sync. 

This next game is called Ex Cross and it’s anoth­er abstract strat­e­gy game about shift­ing ide­olo­gies. And play­ers need to mod­i­fy their sys­tems of move­ment by what­ev­er sym­bol is on the top of their piece. So Xes move diag­o­nal­ly, cross­es orthog­o­nal­ly. And it’s based on the con­flict­ing philoso­phies of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

And this game is called Nexus and it’s a—these are all work­ing titles, by the way. But it’s anoth­er pro­to­type and it fea­tures a shift­ing topog­ra­phy. So it needs to be recon­fig­ured to cre­ate paths and ways to vic­to­ry. And also the pieces can be placed on the sides. 

There’s a few more—actually there’s a lot more but I’m not gonna get into it because I want to be con­scious of time. All these games have a basic set of rules, but I pre­fer to have the play­er devel­op their own rules by play­ing with the items and see­ing what hap­pens intu­itive­ly. So this is my favorite set of rules that some­one devel­oped for one of the games. I think if some­one can fol­low those rules I think they’re pret­ty good. 

So, my son Martin is an amaz­ing kid. But he’s averse to most forms of com­pe­ti­tion. And so Quarturn is a game that I made with the inten­tion of cre­at­ing some­thing that he would enjoy. 

So this is a simul­ta­ne­ous turn-less game. So, peo­ple play­ing it don’t need to wait for every­one else to play, they’re all play­ing at the same time. And so every­one needs to be syn­co­pat­ed. And what you’re doing is it’s essen­tial­ly a game of Connect Four for four play­ers, played on a rotat­ing board. So the goal is the same as Connect Four: try to get four in a row. I believe this game’s very immer­sive, and I believe that when you have a game that’s immer­sive it can be called art. 

Articulated Ouroboros

So my artis­tic phi­los­o­phy is sort of a work in progress. At this moment I would say I’m cre­at­ing envi­ron­ments for peo­ple to play, and learn, and be trans­formed. I love moments like this when the tra­di­tion­al bound­aries of the gallery are blurred and the view­ers become col­lab­o­ra­tors. So I feel like these pieces sort of informed my work for the Shall Make, Shall Be exhibition. 

So with that intro­duc­tion, I’m sure you’re prob­a­bly won­der­ing how this sor­ta mild-mannered game designer/kinetic sculp­ture artist became inspired by the Second Amendment, com­mon­ly known as the right to bear arms. 

Well, here’s a quick sto­ry. Until recent­ly I had a pret­ty neg­a­tive impres­sion of guns. I nev­er felt the need to car­ry one, and I did­n’t like the way it made peo­ple act. I did­n’t like the sound it made. And I did­n’t like the dam­age that guns cause. 

So one of my friends who’s a self-defense advo­cate, he thought it was absurd that I had such strong opin­ions about guns but nev­er fired one in my life. So he assert­ed that— Actually, I wrote it down because I did­n’t want to get the quote wrong. ​“An armed pop­u­lace is able to con­trol their own des­tiny and not be a vic­tim of fate.” And he remind­ed me that the Civil Rights Movement relied on armed volunteers. 

So he chal­lenged me, or guilt­ed me, depend­ing on how you look at it, to not be afraid of the tool. So I went to vis­it a gun range a few times. And I’m glad I did, because it elim­i­nat­ed the mys­tery of firearms and allowed me to look at the Second Amendment more objectively. 

So the goal of this project was to think crit­i­cal­ly about both sides of the debate and to chal­lenge my own point of view. So to orga­nize my thoughts I sort of went to the famil­iar com­ic for­mat. I want­ed to cre­ate sort of a cohe­sive narrative. 

So the Second Amendment’s a con­tentious sub­ject. I don’t need to remind you of that. And it was a tough thing to for me to get my brain around. The first thing I had to do is real­ize I did­n’t need to be an expert on it. And I wish I would have got­ten that through my head before, because I was doing a lot of research and felt…unqualified. But then I real­ized we’re all com­ment­ing as artists on these amend­ments. So I chal­lenged myself to think about it objec­tive­ly and not polit­i­cal­ly. And after a lot of sketch­es I deter­mined what I want­ed to do is cre­ate a pen­ny arcade-style game. 

So the play­er would approach this table, which had a puz­zle. And they would com­plete the puz­zle and the puz­zle would rep­re­sent the utopi­an ver­sion of the Amendment. And then that would trig­ger some ani­ma­tions and a music com­po­si­tion on the wall that’s more of a com­ment on gun cul­ture today. So I want­ed to cre­ate sort of a cause-and-effect rela­tion­ship between the puz­zle and the sort of messy reality. 

So here’s the ide­al­is­tic inter­pre­ta­tion. The Second Amendment ren­ders any pro­hib­i­tive reg­u­la­tions on arms uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, because the founders cor­re­lat­ed arms with per­se­ver­ance and inde­pen­dence. So for many Americans being armed was a way to main­tain an equilibrium—and ​“equi­lib­ri­um” is the oper­a­tive word here—between peo­ple and the things that might do them harm. So in this utopi­an vision, the right to bear arms main­tains a lev­el play­ing field and it also is afford­ed to all able-bodied cit­i­zens, no excep­tions. Notice I said ​“utopi­an.” That’s not how it is in real life. But the peo­ple should be pre­pared and equipped to defend them­selves, to main­tain an equi­lib­ri­um in the pur­suit of life, lib­er­ty, and hap­pi­ness. So as the proverb says, it’s bet­ter to be a war­rior in the gar­den than a gar­den­er at war. In oth­er words, it’s bet­ter to have a gun and not use it than to need one and it’s not there. 

So for my project, like I said equi­lib­ri­um was the oper­a­tive word and a bal­ance of pow­ers is also known as a stand­off, which is the title of my project. And a stand­off was a stale­mate or dead­lock between two peo­ple in con­flict. An armed stand­off occurs when every­body points their weapons at each oth­er and they all become par­a­lyzed by the fear of mutu­al destruc­tion. An armed stand­off can take many forms and is com­mon in pop cul­ture. Games and puz­zles often dis­till con­cepts and ideas into sim­ple sim­u­la­tions, so I want­ed to make an abstract puz­zle that when com­plet­ed sor­ta con­veyed a sense of equi­lib­ri­um or an uneasy peace. 

So I was drawn to the con­cept of fin­ger guns as a metaphor. I also did­n’t want to use actu­al guns in this project. That was sort of a chal­lenge for myself, to not make this about shoot­ing things or make this about overt violence. 

So the ges­ture of using your hand to mim­ic a gun is often used in harm­less or humor­ous con­texts, but it has a cer­tain pow­er. Like for exam­ple in your state of Pennsylvania, fin­ger guns were ruled that they pro­vide a reck­less provo­ca­tion, which means you can actu­al­ly be arrest­ed for using a fin­ger gun on a police­men in Pennsylvania. 

So I start­ed carv­ing the hands out of blocks of sol­id oak. And then I start­ed cre­at­ing the puz­zle. Each block is adorned with a pair of carved wood­en hands. There’s ones that are 90 degrees each from each oth­er in the cor­ners. And they’re in line on the sides. So the object of the puz­zle is to neu­tral­ize all of the fin­gers so they’re all point­ing at each oth­er and the fin­gers are basi­cal­ly can­cel­ing each oth­er out. So at that point you’ve achieved the clas­sic standoff. 

So once the puz­zle’s solved, there’s some but­tons on the front and they’re pow­ered up and they acti­vate some mech­a­nisms on the back wall. These draw­ings are an old­er pro­to­type but the con­cept is still the same. The back wall is a com­men­tary on gun cul­ture in America. The abstract­ed sim­plic­i­ty of the puz­zle gives away to more of a com­pli­cat­ed lega­cy of racism and clas­sism and cruelty. 

So when the left but­ton is pressed, a music com­po­si­tion will play. And this is a music box mech­a­nism that’s trig­gered by the loca­tions of bul­let holes from my paper tar­get. And this com­po­si­tion­s’s called ​“Aversion Therapy,” to sort of rep­re­sent my ini­tial ambi­gu­i­ty toward firearms. And this is a good exam­ple of an acci­den­tal com­po­si­tion, sort of in the spir­it of John Cage. It’s a com­po­si­tion that’s free of the com­poser’s will. In oth­er words it’s inter­est­ing but it might not be uh…melodic.

Additionally there will be two drums, one at three beats per minute and one at forty-five beats per minute. And this will rep­re­sent the rate of fire between a Revolutionary-era mus­ket and an AR-15 respectively. 

So when the right but­ton’s pressed, a flip­book mech­a­nis­m’s acti­vat­ed and mul­ti­ple ani­ma­tions will play simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, cre­at­ing sort of a loop­ing col­lage. The ani­ma­tions rep­re­sent data about guns in the US and images asso­ci­at­ed with guns. And it’s my thought that we pri­mar­i­ly don’t talk much about the root caus­es of gun vio­lence because we haven’t allowed our­selves to col­lect the data. And so the graphs are heav­i­ly influ­enced by WEB DuBois’ data por­traits that he exhib­it­ed in Paris in 1900. 

And I believe the Second Amendment is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the only cause of this con­flict, but I think it’s cre­at­ed this polar­iz­ing effect on the debate. And I want­ed this to be a lit­tle over­whelm­ing. So the play­er can choose to either focus on details or the larg­er picture. 

So I’d like to con­clude this pre­sen­ta­tion with a quote from James Baldwin. He said, I love America more than any oth­er coun­try in the world and, exact­ly for this rea­son, I insist on the right to crit­i­cize her per­pet­u­al­ly.

So Standoff is about appre­ci­at­ing the spir­it of the Second Amendment while still despis­ing gun vio­lence. And it’s also about rec­on­cil­ing American mythol­o­gy with American bru­tal­i­ty. And like America itself, I think the Second Amendment can be many things at the same time. Thank you.