Engineering Psychology
Charlie James Gallery is delighted to present Alexander Reben in his solo gallery debut Engineering Psychology, opening at the gallery August 15th in conjunction with the 7th Annual Perform Chinatown.
Engineering Psychology invites the viewer to become the subject in a dialogue between technology and humanity. Ranging from low to high tech and from playful to serious, each piece uses technology to engage an element of human experience: including love, attraction, physical pleasure, repulsion, and pain. Works will include balloons that appear alive, a machine that gives visitors a ‘headgasm’, robots that break down barriers with cuteness, devices that placate and tease, a mask that mechanizes humanity, and installations that invoke child-like joy and suggest unbearable visceral pain.
Alexander Reben (b. 1985) makes work that uses science and technology to probe deeply into synthetic psychology and artificial philosophy. Alexander has exhibited at venues both in the U.S. and internationally including Ars Electronica, Volta, The Whitney Biennial, Axiom, TFI Interactive, IDFA, ArtBots, The Tribeca Film Festival, The Camden Film Festival, Doc/Fest, and The Boston Cyberarts Gallery. His work has been covered by NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, Fast Company, Filmmaker Magazine, New Scientist, BBC, PBS, Discovery Channel, Cool Hunting and Wired among others. He has lectured at TED, SXSW, TTI Vanguard, Google, UC Berkeley, SMFA, CCA, MIT and other universities. Reben has built robots for NASA and is a graduate of MIT.
Installation
