With my granny 
in the white bubble-like Honda civic 
driving to Taupo
from Havelock North

Perhaps I’m ten years old
“what is an artist?”
gran said an artist
sees things 
observes 
everything
their work shows this
seeing

I looked out the window as the forest sped by
I remember 
intense joyful colours shapes details
moving past and felt deeply
in my heart 
this is what I am

I love you gran

Humans have become adept in the creation of robots and machines which fulfil a useful purpose;
Vacuuming the floor
Mowing the lawn
A car is a machine which, as an extension of the human body allows us to travel in a different way,
as does a bicycle.
These machines are extensions of the human and articulated with physical interface designed entirely around the human body.
The machines which we have surrounded ourselves with allow us to extend the reach of our will.

The physical and material world is communicated to through the physical action.
Speaking is a physical action.

I want to go somewhere.
I have a feeling of wanting to be in another place.
I want to go to the beach to relax and to slow down mentally.
To do this I use my physical body in communication with another invented/created physical body; a car, a bicycle, a train, an airplane.

This is a particular point of interest for me; that our communication with the physical is our way of articulating beyond the physical.

The communication of the spiritual / religious through physical mechanism saturates the history of automaton and "living" mechanisms.*

That the physical is a means by which we are able to interact with all things so as to incorporate and convert these things through the actions they serve and the feelings which we have in response to  the physical presence of these things.

The subject of feeling is a place which my creative practise is specifically engaged with.

This is why I specify that the mechanical exists as a language.
We are adept in the subtle understanding of the physical.
We are this physical, as well as whatever else we are!

Our culture/society prioritises the useful or the clearly useful. 
This is seemingly common sense, but this favouring of the obviously useful is a limiting factor in our innovation and development.
So much is not useful which still can be explored.

Feelings are communicated through the physical gesture.

A poetic use of the language of mechanism so as to suggest a relationship between us, who occupy a physical body and an invented physical, sculptural, mechanical body.

The relationship between a person and this physical thing (a composition of stuff) is where the
connection to the practice of puppetry exists.

Puppetry is effective by way of a profound connectedness of the will and body of a person (puppeteer/audience/viewer) to the thing (puppet).
Through this invented-body-thing feeling is expressed.
This happens by the deep awareness and physical expression of techniques of puppetry performance.
The specific communication of physical happens also as a result of the living tradition of puppet making which in part aims to give the human a feeling of sensing a particular and living body.
Through geometry, physics, material quality and form.

most often the puppet is a physical representation

my interest is that this language has value beyond representation and that each suggestion can be isolated and combined with another

words and phrasing 
may be used 
in description and instruction

words and phrasing
may be used
as and for themselves

combined 
to make 
only a shape
only a sound

here
words and phrasing are separated from their obvious usefulness
perhaps
in so doing they are set free
they may again be useful
but no longer must they always be so

so it is with the exploitation of previously useful objects within a poetic phrasing
a previous purpose contributes 
even in the poetic
all objects and material have a previous incarnation
like the roots of words 
an invented poetic archeology of objects and materials

*recommended reading -The Restless Clock by Jessica Riskin