Daria Martin

soft materials, 2004

'I HAVE TO ADMIT that the old-fashioned humanist in me was slightly shocked to realize that the "soft materials" referred to in the title of Daria Martin's 2004 film are, in fact, people'
Barry Schwabsky

The films of American artist Daria Martin (born in 1973) map out newly interpreted images of modernistic ideals and tendencies within the performative arts. A constant interchanging of performer and object challenge the viewer to re-define their perception in a world of artifice, cheap materials and alarmingly real fantasies.
She has an interest in artificial intelligence documents interaction between people and machines in her 2004 film soft materials.

Soft Materials was shot in the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Zurich where scientists research 'embodied artificial intelligence'. This cutting edge area of AI produces robots which, rather than being programmed from the head down by a computer brain, instead learn to function through the experience of their physical bodies.

The film introduces the robots to two performers, one man and one woman, trained in body awareness and acutely sensitive to the nuances of movement. These performers shed skins of soft fabric, bearing their joints like the frank structure of a machine, and then, naked, they perform a series of dances with the robots. Creating intimate relationships that are in turn tender, funny and eerie, they bend flexible human fantasy around tough materials.

Soft Materials creates a new image of 'man and machine', thus continuing Martin's aspiration to revisit the questions of the early Modern period. However, Soft Materials also connects with 1960's performance practices, which honed bodily relationships to physical objects; one inspiration for the project is Robert Morris's film, Neoclassical, which depicts an idealised interaction between his sculptures and two viewers. Created during what some call the 'Digital Revolution', the work sees a return to the physical object in an arena of embodied play. Ironically, the objects in question are technological creations, and ones that mimic our own animal physicality. Soft Materials takes to a new level Martin's ongoing concern with tangible fantasy and the power of artifice.

For a discussion of this work go to:
http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/daria_martin1/

Her own site:
http://www.dariamartin.com/films_3.htm

and Maureen Paley site has other images and information:
http://www.maureenpaley.com/

Catalogue Edited by Beatrix Ruf. Essay by Catherine Wood.
PUBLISHED BY: JRP/Ringier,2006
ISBN: 9783905701548