Machine Project

Our current transformation is Alvarado Caverns Mystery Theater, a project turning Machine’s street level space into a haunted cave and its basement into a Victorian opera house. We regularly rearrange the Machine Project gallery space for performances and classes. About once a year, the transformation is more dramatic. In past lives, Machine has been an indoor forest, a sinking ship, a storefront plaza, and a messier version of itself.

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  In April 2009, Christy McCaffrey and Sara Newey turned Machine Project into an outdoor Forest. Numerous woodland-themed lectures, musical performances, poetry readings, ghost stories and film screenings were held among the trees. When it was time to take it down, our Deforestation Squad recycled all forest materials into free art objects, tailored to request.
  More information about the Forest and woodland events here.

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  For Nate Page’s February 2010 site-specific installation, Subject/Object/Project he followed Machine’s staff around for a few weeks as they went about their day-to-day business. He then transformed the physical stuff of Machine into narrative sculptural vignettes, including the contents of Director Mark Allen’s desk drawer and a giant folding chair. Other supplies were shrink-wrapped.
  More information about Subject/Object/Project here.

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  For a period of seven weeks Josh Beckman’s Sea Nymph hosted a whole series of nautical-themed events, performances, lectures, and workshops, as well as an opera by and for dogs. Inside the capsized hull of the ship there was a crystal cave.
  More information about Sea Nymph here.

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  Storefront Plaza by Nate Page relocates the windows of Machine Project and reinstalls them twenty feet back into the main gallery space. To achieve this the exterior walls of the building stretch deep into Machine’s storefront along a constructed support structure which re-assigns much of the interior space as exterior space. As a result, the public will be able to access what was formerly Machine Project’s front room now transformed as a large sidewalk alcove; the storefront pulled back like a slingshot from the street.
  More information about Storefront Plaza.

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  Alvarado Caverns and Mystery Theater is a project by Chris Weisbart that turns the street level of our space into a haunted cave. In the basement, we are building an 18-seat Victorian opera house that is accessed via a hidden staircase behind a stalagmite in the cave. We are commissioning a wide range of artists and performers to develop works around hauntings, the uncanny, and the mysterious to take place in the space.
  More information about Alvarado Caverns and Mystery Theater here.