“Automata Garage” was featured at UC Irvine’s Experimental Media Performance Lab (xMPL) from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on May 29 and 30.
The installation’s creative team featured Ash Arder, a transdisciplinary artist whose work has been featured at the California African American Museum and the Swiss Institute, Reed Wixson, a Ph.D. candidate in integrated composition, improvisation and technology at UCI and Beatrice von Rague Schleyer, a Master of Arts at UCI’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts.
The team hoped the multimedial installation would push audiences to consider nonhuman agency and the role of these entities in everyday environments.
The installation used headlights from a Jeep Grand Cherokee WJ. These headlights were strewn around the xMPL and responded to the movement of the audience member. They turned left, right, on and off depending on the headlights’s interaction with whoever stepped near them.
Simultaneously, a robust sound system echoed eerie and ceaseless groaning of engines, rusting of metal and other such automotive effects. The room was made dark so that the headlights drew attention when turned on.
“I think we could think of the non-human in a much more thoughtful way,” Schleyer told New University. “The fact that we approach the non-human as merely instrumental actually kind of limits our perspective and is a huge oversight in understanding how things are built in the environment.”
Automaton is a term that refers to a self-operating machine or mechanical structure, like animatronics. In the installation, the headlights’ movement is not caused by human touch or manipulation, but instead responds to the place and movement of the audience member.
Automata Studio, run by Schleyer and Arder, has created a number of visual experiences which can be viewed on its Instagram page. These generally incorporate headlights from automobiles and sit amidst differing scenes that play with color, modality and space.
Arder and Schleyer had worked together previously and met in Detroit, a traditional center of the automotive industry.
“When I discovered that Ash had a shared interest in making artworks with automotive parts, it kind of opened our dialogue,” Schleyer said. “She originally got this collection of headlights from an estate sale … Originally, she was trying to find a way to create her own artwork with them, but eventually [she] decided that they weren’t really specific enough in terms of the car itself and her relationship to it to use in her own practice.”
Despite this, the pair found new methods to express their intention.
“Coming to UCI and having access to this space, kind of opened my sense of possibility with the project, The xMPL in particular, being kind of an open format, black box theater… [is] very modular. When I originally saw this space on my tour after my interview, I was really impressed with it,” Schleyer said.
The xMPL also serves as a space for theater and was created in the “black-box” genre. Black-box theater allows for seating to be moved and is characterized by black walls. This grants production teams flexibility when designing the stage layout and its interaction with the audience.
Because of this enhanced capacity for audience interaction, black-box theater has become important in avant-garde, experimental, community and school performances.
Schleyer was inspired by the space to imagine the automata as performers, and thus arranged the installation to encourage this interplay between the viewers and the headlights. Interplay of this nature, Schleyer hopes, helps audiences reimagine the role of tools and other material in our day-to-day lives.
She described how synthetic creations in our environment maintain a use-value to society, but, when this wanes, must eventually cycle into new roles, often as detritus.
“If we were building things to consider that whole cycle from start to finish, it would be a lot less likely that we had an island of plastic in the ocean, for example,” Schleyer said. “I think we could build things much more thoughtfully and in a way that’s actually less damaging to our own bodies and ecosystem.”
Aidan Wyrough is a Features Staff Writer for the spring 2026 quarter. He can be reached at awyrough@uci.edu.
