Machine Project

Machine Project has been invited to produce a year of programming which proposes new, alternative, and experimental ways of presenting work at the Hammer Museum. We are looking at using non-traditional spaces like hallways, lobbies, elevators, and stairwells. We are also investigating different ideas of audiences from intimate, focused performances for one or two audience members, to dispersed, ambient spacial pieces without formal audiences at all.

Aside from our page, feel free to check out the Hammer’s page of events involving Machine Project.

Projects

• Little William Theater Festival of New Music

  
  The Festival of New Music comprises four resident ensembles, 97 composers, 350+ new works, and over 400 concerts inside a coatroom, under the stairs in the lobby of the Hammer Museum. All works have been commissioned for this festival, and are under two minutes in length.

• Live Museum Soundtrack

  
  Museum patrons receive a Live Museum Soundtrack from one of our resident guitarists. Through a set of headphones, they walk visitors through their time in the collection improvising music to the art they view. Soundtracks are live, improvised, and completely personal.

• Ping Pong Table

  
  we have one.

• ANNIE OKAY
  
  ANNIE OKAY is an original performance theater work by Asher Hartman utilizing Hammer’s public spaces. The piece is inspired by the unintentional colonialist subtext in Annie Get Your Gun and The King and I.

• Giant Hand
  
  Let our Giant Hand show you around the Hammer Museum.

• Level5
  

  Level5 is a live action role playing performance piece by Brody Condon, based on the Bay Area self actualization seminars of the 1970’s. Condon’s work draws together disparate communities – performative folk artists, performance artists, and practioners of experimental theater – to explore the construction of the self. In this two day participatory piece, fifty players will transform via the characters, or alibis, that they assume.

  Visitors at the Hammer are welcomed to watch Level5live-streamed video to the Billy Wilder Theater on Sept. 4 & 5 from 1-5pm.

• Plant Vacation

  
  The Hammer would like you to give your houseplant a vacation during our August Cultural Retreat for Plants. Throughout the entire month, participant plants will be installed in the light flooded Lindbrook Terrace and presented with a series of readings, performances, and musical events for plants.

• Experiments in Incidental, Dispersed, and Ambulatory Sound

  
  A large part of the residency at the Hammer Museum involved experimenting with sound in the Hammer’s varied public spaces. Musicians performed for transient audiences or small groups who had the option to stop and listen one-on-one.

• The Little William Theater

  
  The Little William Theater is located in a coat-room in the lobby under the stairs at the Hammer Museum. It is one of the world’s newest and smallest theaters, with seating for two people, and different performers every week.

• SOUNDINGS: Bells at the Hammer

  

  All visitors will be issued a small bell, which they can wear as they move through the galleries, courtyard, lobby, and other public spaces. Admission to the museum will be free of charge to all participants. Additional bell-related sound pieces will take place throughout the day, including circulating ice cream carts, animatronic Santa bells in the museum’s coatroom, and an African bell ensemble.

• Group Therapy + Needlepointing
  

  Led by psycho-analyst and needlepointing enthusiast, Dr. Ellen Medway, a small group of people will convene weekly in the museum sessions for therapy over an eight-week period. While the group pursues self-exploration, discovery and psychological enrichment, they will also be engaging with craft and art history as they needlepoint images based on paintings from the museum’s permanent collection.

• Guest Book

  
  Come sign our giant guest book.

• 
  Singing by Numbers

  The Singing by Numbers Experimental Women’s Choir will be holding workshops and performances on microtonal singing throughout May and early June.

• Dream-In

  
  An overnight Dream-In at the Hammer Museum. Dreamers are invited to camp out in the Hammer courtyard and collect any dreams that occur during their stay. The evening will feature experimental dreaming workshops, concerts, and bedtime stories, followed by a waking concert in the morning, all facilitated by a dreamy batch of local artist-psychonauts.

• TABLACENTRIC

  

  Robin Sukhadia and his 12 pairs of tabla hold open tabla classes interspersed with live performances from LA based Indian classical artists.

  Curated by Robin Sukhadia and Jaeger Smith

• Songs of Heart-break/Songs of Triumph

  
  On Valentine’s Day, Emily Lacy sings songs of triumph and songs of heart-break in the Billy Wilder Theater to one patron at a time.

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  UCLA Extension: School of Paleolithic Skills

  Mike Metzger leads the School of Paleolithic Skills at the Hammer, teaching students how to forage for edible plants in Westwood and work with bamboo.