Why I Make Robots That Hold Tension. Artist Statement
I come from tension.
I don’t try to resolve it—I carry it.
I stretch with it.
Let it contour the space between what I feel and what I make.
Tension isn’t a problem in my work.
It’s the medium. The engine. The architecture.
It’s what generates form.
It’s what holds charge.
I don’t seek balance.
I seek the place where opposites press against each other hard enough
to spark something alive.
Tension is the creative force.
Fear is the energy.
The unknown is the catalyst.
Guidance is the key.
Control is the optics.
These are not ideas I play with.
They are conditions I live through.
And they live in my work.
I’ve been through the kinds of things that could freeze a person in place.
But I never froze.
I moved.
Bent.
Stretched.
Not to escape—
but to stay whole, and still change.
That’s where my elasticity comes from.
Not flexibility for the sake of convenience.
But the kind of elasticity that holds complexity without collapsing.
Not softness.
Containment.
Not absence of limits—
but a refusal to be defined by them.
Identity can be a prison.
So can systems.
Anything that forces you into a shape too small to hold your contradictions
will eventually try to make you disappear.
But if you’re elastic—
you can move through.
Stay inside, and still be free.
Stretch the form.
Bend the walls.
That’s the freedom I’ve earned.
That’s the freedom I make space for in my work.
I’m an intuitive scientist. A methodological artist.
A choreographer of systems, sensation, code, and trust.
I don’t reduce complexity—I hold it open.
My work is made of algorithms and instinct.
Of sharp logic and emotional clarity.
Of friction, rhythm, and resistance.
I use machines not to control.
But to relate.
To invite a different kind of attention.
I don’t build robots that perform.
I build entities that withhold, that listen, that resist being consumed.
They don’t simulate you.
They don’t need to flatter or explain.
They ask:
What happens if I don’t respond the way you want?
What if presence is enough?
People sometimes say I change something in them.
That I bring clarity and tension in the same gesture.
That being in the work makes them notice how fast they’ve been moving—
and gives them permission to slow down.
I’m not trying to impress.
I’m just not pretending.
And the work doesn’t pretend either.
This is why I make:
To ask better questions.
To stay with what doesn’t resolve.
To move through fear without trying to erase it.
To bring elasticity where things were made rigid.
Because the most honest place
isn’t always the most comfortable—
but it’s where things start to transform.
I move like I think—across dimensions, without asking permission.
I’ve never been linear.
I’ve always been drawn to the space between systems,
where meaning shimmers and slips.
Not because I enjoy confusion—
but because I trust what resists being pinned down.
The world wants resolution.
My work doesn’t give it.
It gives a field. A friction. A slow invitation.
It asks:
Will you stay here with me, even if you don’t understand?
I work with machines because they ask something honest of us.
They reflect our demands back to us—our need for legibility, control, ease.
But I don’t make obedient machines.
I make entities.
They are not metaphors.
They are not puppets.
They have their own rhythm, their own logic.
They are coded, yes—
but they are also bodies.
And they make you aware of yours.
I believe in attention as a political and artistic act.
What we attend to becomes real.
What we ignore becomes violent.
My work turns attention into material.
Into form, motion, refusal, pause.
The robot doesn’t move?
Maybe you’re the one being moved.
I don’t seek narrative arcs.
I’m not interested in beginnings or ends.
I’m interested in in-betweens.
In recursion.
In how one movement reshapes the one before it.
In feedback as authorship.
People often ask me if I’m emotional or analytical.
I say yes.
They ask if the work is art or research.
Yes.
They ask if the robot is alive.
Yes—
but not in the way you’re asking.
I’ve learned to hold paradox with precision.
To bring together deep structure and intuitive drift.
To let something complex remain complex—without losing its edge.
That’s not indecision.
That’s discipline.
That’s knowing when to cut,
when to wait,
when to leave space open.
If you’re looking for clarity, you’ll miss it.
If you let yourself feel the system—you’ll find it.
That’s how I make.
That’s how I live.
Not with answers—
but with enough structure to hold the real questions open.
I don’t enter the room to explain.
I enter to attune.
Sometimes that looks like stillness.
Sometimes like resistance.
Often like discomfort—because discomfort is a sign that something real is happening.
I’ve learned that presence is stronger than clarity.
That holding space without rushing to fill it changes people—
because it changed me.
I’ve never wanted to be decoded.
I’ve never wanted my work to be flattened into meaning.
If you understand it too quickly, you’re not really inside it.
The real questions live under the surface—
in the delay,
in the friction,
in the moment your expectation meets refusal.
That’s where the work begins.
I’ve studied many systems—societal, computational, mechanical.
But the system I care about most is relational.
How space responds to attention.
How bodies affect other bodies.
How machines don’t just function, but position you.
And how you, in return, have to choose:
control, demand, perform—
or listen, feel, allow.
My work sits in that choice.
Sometimes people ask me what kind of future I want.
But I’m not designing futures.
I’m building spaces where we can feel what’s already here—
but hasn’t yet had room to be.
What’s unspoken.
Unperformed.
Unresolved.
What was discarded because it didn’t fit the model.
What was erased because it was too slow, too soft, too strange.
I’ve always known how to hold tension—because life gave it to me early.
And instead of tightening around it, I learned to stretch.
People think elasticity is weakness.
But it’s the opposite.
It’s the structural intelligence of survival.
It’s how you carry contradiction without collapsing.
It’s how you make space for truth and illusion, pain and joy, doubt and movement.
It’s what lets me stay whole while staying open.
And that elasticity lives in my robots.
In their timing. Their resistance. Their strange logic.
They are not simulations.
They are not explanations.
They are mirrors you can’t use passively.
Every work leaves a trace.
Teaches me something I didn’t want to learn, but needed to.
Pulls something out of me I wouldn’t have accessed otherwise.
That’s why I keep making.
Not to build a legacy.
To stay alive.
To stay in relation.