Maker

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says. “But there were people in those labs who also worked at SRL, so they cut the red tape and steered the contracts to me.”

In more than 25 years, SRL has harbored hundreds of engineers, physicists, artists, bathroom chemists, gearheads, and hackers who all find joy in the social commentary disguised as mechanical mayhem.

“SRL has always attracted the interests of people who really are on the cutting edge of technology, and they volunteer assistance and materials that we wouldn’t otherwise have access to,” Pauline says.

Even with friends in the right places, the contract work couldn’t cover the increasing cost of the intricate machine designs Pauline had in his mind’s eye and scribbled on scraps of paper. At the end of the tech boom, Pauline identified a new market for his technical knowledge. He buys specialty tech gear — server components, tape drives, scanners — on the cheap, tests them, makes any necessary repairs, and then auctions them off on eBay. Essentially, he has learned to identify the treasures in the tech “trash” that companies cast off due to downscaling or planned obsolescence.

“I’m a vulture capitalist,” he says.

While most people lost their shirts on the dot-com bust, Pauline paid off his debt, bought a house, and funded several large shows out of his own pocket.

“I might take a $40,000 loss on a show, but it’s just a taxable expense for me and it’s considered promotion for the company,” he says.

The Fish Boy’s Dream Along with enabling Pauline to move out of his bunker bedroom-cum-office, his vulture-capital career has afforded SRL the luxury of upgrading its tool arsenal. Most of the early machines were assembled from parts that were scavenged from junkyards or obtained “surreptitiously,” Pauline says. Items taken without, er, proper approval are known around the shop as “obtainium.” Custom components were hand-tooled from raw materials — an incredibly time-consuming process, especially when the machines could take years to build. For example, Pauline spent

five years on and off (mostly on) bringing the six-legged walking machine to life. Times have changed. At the center of the SRL shop is a shiny new CNC (computer numerical control) milling machine that automatically fabricates parts based on a digital design file.

“Our cycle of production mirrors recent changes in industrial manufacturing,” Pauline says. “You can think more about the design of something because the time it takes to go from bare metal to a finished project is much shorter. All the hundreds of hours you’d spend in front of a manual machine making duplicate parts are condensed way down.”

The first maniacal machines to roll off the CNC-powered assembly line were a battalion of Sneaky Soldiers. The remote-controlled androids contain a battery-powered chain-drive mechanism so powerful that they can pull themselves along on their steel bellies. Ten soldiers debuted in The Fish Boy’s Dream, a performance held outside a Los Angeles Chinatown art gallery earlier this year. Of those ten, only two will ever walk — or rather, crawl — again.

The Sneaky Soldiers will have to wait for Pauline to tend to their injuries. His attention is now on the Snot Gun, a large tube outfitted with a gas mixer and ignition plug. The bottom of the tube is filled with a stinky stew of wallpaper paste and bait fish. When ignited, balls of the gooey “snot” are propelled 200 feet out of the end of the tube. “It’s like what happens when you cover one nostril and blow really hard,” Pauline explains.

The Snot Gun and other machines are being overhauled in preparation for SRL’s first large-scale Bay Area show in nearly a decade. This month, the group will perform in San Jose as part of the 13th International Symposium for Electronic Arts. This is one of the rare instances where a city government has given its stamp of approval to Pauline’s band of maverick machinists. Maybe they don’t know what to expect.

“This show will have an apocalyptic theme loosely based on Dante’s Inferno,” Pauline says. “Think of it as Six Flags over hell.”

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