A Visit to Arthur Ganson's Work @ the MIT Museum

Machine with Roller Chain

by Arthur Ganson, 1996

steel, motor & roller chain

as seen in the MIT Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Arthur Ganson's work is currently on display at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The exhibit, composed of works from his time as resident artist in 1998, ensnares its visitors amidst a return to innocence that is, altogether, too abrupt and short-lived.

As I made my way to the second floor, past the exhibit about animatronics and interactive artificial intelligences and some works of holography (did I mention that the museum was just a wealth of fascinating information??), I was welcomed to the world of Ganson's small machines.

Each machine offered a playful invitation, not only to enjoy its aesthetic, but to solve the mystery of its function. Many of his works involve a multitude of interactive parts, making up the greater Whole, and many an onlooker could be seen carefully using their fingers to trace an imaginary line of action from one moving piece to another. I too would find the "focus" of the works, which was often a character or item like a plastic figure or an avocado leaf or a pair of deuling daquiri swords, and work my way backwards to the eventual source of the movement. At times, an elaborate action's genesis would be housed in a miniature motor, one found in kids' race cars.

My purpose in attending the exhibit was to view the many works and select one to which I was strongly drawn. I then was to analyze the action and decipher the engineering language of the piece. My hope in selecting a piece was that it would in some way relate to my "quizzical itch" of bettering my understanding of a mind with Aspergers.

I chose Machine with Roller Chain, 1996. The action simple, with a single steel rod's being twirled by a motor. At the end of the rod was attached a 16-tooth gear. Around the gear was wrapped a heavy-duty bike chain (or Roller Chain, as it was labeled). The chain was fed away from the gear, through an opening in a steel plate, which was in the shape of a flattened letter U. The chain then returned to the gear through another opening in the plate, where it would catch the gear teeth and repeat the loop through the two openings. The curious aspect of the macine was the glaring lack of a second gear at the middle of the roller chain. The use of the machine was to be useless. Nothing happened once the roller chain was moved.

Perhaps "nothing" is not the correct word; it in fact created a mesmerizing effect, with the roller chain's overlapping and bunching upon itself while the other end of the chain was slowly returned through the other opening. The action of the ever-accumulating links of chain imitated an image of magma exiting the mouth of a volcano, with more and more material spewing forth and joining with previously-expelled lava. The resulting pile of excess roller chain atop the steel plate was one of constant motion and alteration, yet the pile did not progress beyond its name. It was always a pile.

I loved the simplicity of the machine and how it was the antithesis of Ganson's other works. Whereas his other objects were examples of seamless mechanical interaction, here was a piece that was lacking an entire piece of the equation. The chain's movement produced no further activity. It just was.

It's in this simplicity that I found my connection. As a teacher, how often do I expect too much from a student? How many times have I overlooked the beauty of the process at the root of the problem? Especially when discussing the deficiencies that accompany the mind with AS, how easy is it to say, "But they only did it halfway!" "What about the other half of the assignment (or interaction or activity or whatever)?" When in actuality, the effort that produces the first step in a task is equally as important, and, sometimes, the hardest of all. It takes flexibility and patience and an open mind to recognize the beauty in the half-finished task. But with AS, it's one of the most valuable responses we can offer the struggling student.

For instance, I welcomed a new student to my art class today. He is in the 3rd Grade and has an AS diagnosis. He was facing a difficult situation as soon as he entered the room, because we'd been working as a group for the previous six weeks on a class project. This student was entering toward the end of a project and being asked to join a team of peers with whom he'd worked very little. The deck was definitely stacked against him, and I honestly expected some fireworks.

And we had a few to begin with. I'd expected that he'd find trouble in transitioning to a new room with a new teacher. I'd expected that he wouldn't really be a strong teammate, as I've observed many with AS who have a hard time working with group dynamics. But I knew that this was something that the student would benefit from experiencing, so I stuck to my guns. I asked the student how he thought he could contribute to the project, whether he had any ideas of what to add to the sculpture. He ignored me and actually physically moved his body away from me in his seat, nearly falling off the other side of the chair! As the class progressed, I worked to find an avenue on which we could find some compromise and success, but no headway was made by the end of the period.

I had a planning block following the class, so I asked to keep the student with me so we could sort out the frustrations. By the end of another half-hour, we'd come to an agreement: he would make TWO sculptures of rescue choppers (military aircraft is one of his topics of perseveration or special interest), one of which could be attached to the class sculpture and the other which will be mailed to the RI Coast Guard.

Now, how this relates, in as roundabout a way as I can manage, is that a bystander may say, "But he didn't do any work! He just pouted and argued all period!" But, it was in his finding a compromise that I think the most difficult challenge was for this student. He can make the sculpture in five minutes if he wants to, but it was in his talking through his frustrations and seeing an issue from more than his own perspective that really showed he learned something today. I had to find my solace in his establishing that FIRST gear of the machine, that will allow everything else that comes after it to work correctly.

This is the lesson that I hope to carry with me. Thanks to the work of Arthur Ganson, my interaction now has a concrete visual example on which I can draw, and, since I am quite the visual learner, I have gained quite an extraodinary new perspective.

P.S. Here's one of the more whimsical of Ganson's pieces that I thought shouldn't be missed: wishbone.