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Soft Machine: DNA
November 4, 2011
Mike Saijo’s Soft Machine: DNA exhibit is one in an ongoing series entitled Soft Machine Project (SMP). SMP brings together science, education, design and community capacity building into a series of art exhibitions designed to evolve as SMP travels, locally and globally.
SMP is an outgrowth of the ideas inspired by the “cut-up fold in” method of William S. Burroughs devised in his sci fi novel, Soft Machine. Burroughs confronts the roots of bureaucracy, drugs, hatred, hype, war, addiction, linguistics, and various forms of mind control. The book raises awareness as to where social order ends and social engineering begins. Saijo’s exhibit explores the process of mindful procuring of quantitative and qualitative data, using inclusive, non competitive, transparent, and accountable protocols, employed by scientists and draws the comparison to the process an artist employs when observing and mapping “social DNA” to accomplish an anthropological-historical perspective.
Saijo is acutely aware of the awakening which is now global in geographical scope; comprehensive in social scale. He recognizes that it is a multi-generational demographic profile, receptive to rapid socio-political mobilization (ie. The current Occupy Movement).
This awakening is transnational in sources of inspiration because of cumulative impact of social media and the critical analysis of media itself. Saijo’s art is his method of observing and revealing new approaches to interface with the world and build capacity through pattern recognition using the scientific process. He is developing a body of work to travel to different communities, shifting and growing as it travels, to encompass a broader understanding of the complexity of human behavior, curiously related to recent discoveries in epigenetics that reveal greater molecular complexity that has only recently begun to be understood.
Saijo has developed Soft Machine: DNA from his original idea of ‘program art,’ hoping to influence young artist to become aware of patterns in nature which can serve as models for looking at and organizing a world view more multi-faceted, similar to the eye of a fly or a moth.
“Human dignity,” Saijo states, “involves social justice and freedom to question authority. Above all, it must involve a respect for every human life including all points of view to enable utilizing mankind’s full potential. Representative democracy has devolved as America has gotten richer. Direct democracy has to be nurtured in small stages and fostered to grow from the ground up. Mankind’s challenge to day is to find better ways of generating more efficient energy, communication, education, legal assistance, medical assistance, food distribution, and general economic self-sufficiency to ensure the future of generations yet to be born.”
The exhibition, Soft Machine: DNA, shares its mission with the following organizations and individuals: OMG GLOBAL,LLC; Sister Cites International SoCal Chapter, Inc.; LA/Nagoya Sister Cities Affiliation; The Society for the Arts in Healthcare’s ARTS+HEALTHCARE MONTH (NOVEMBER); the USC Head and Neck Cancer Survivors Group; Bleicher Contemporary Art, The Silk Trading Co. Los Angeles, AGUA PURO, Inc.; Picasso 3, Catholic Workers; Libros Schmibros; CASA 0101; Corazon del Pueblo/ TC’s Skate Shop; Ovarian Psychos and Emergency USA
For more information contact: lynn.crandall@gmail.com or 213-705-7489