Emails

5 

   "Our emails provide the most complete history of Machine Project. When I started Machine, I told people through email about the events in the space, and since we described every event we ever did in an email, it’s also our most exhaustive archive. Eventually Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram offered additional ways to communicate, but email remains our primary method of talking with our audience. The emails go out on Tuesday, announcing what’s happening the upcoming weekend. They intersperse information on workshops, performances, exhibits, newly released videos, and poster sales with requests for volunteers and loans of equipment from shovels to lasers. Once or twice a year we send out a slightly desperate fundraising request. The voice of the emails is friendly, credulous, amused. Maybe a little scatterbrained. The emails transmit the sensibility and attitude of Machine out into the world on a weekly basis, and the style of the writing creates a context for our events. It may even be that the events we do at the space are driven by what would sound good in an email. We’ve certainly chosen particular projects because we thought the email would make people laugh. I aim to create an image for the reader of who is speaking to them, what kinds of people they might meet at Machine, and what kinds of experiences they might have.

   I wrote the emails in the beginning with help from Jason Brown. Over time a house style emerged, applied, modified, perfected, and mutated by Michele Yu, David Eng, Jessica Cowley, and Lucas Wrench, the operations managers between 2005 and the publication of this catalogue in 2016. Michele’s emails were blunt and funny and often involved pizza. David’s focused more on burritos. Jessica’s were upbeat and welcoming. Lucas tends towards a more baroque style, with bursts of cheerful nihilism and a weakness for references to troglodytes."

excerpt from Machine Project THE PLATINUM COLLECTION

By MARK ALLEN, CHARLOTTE COTTON and RACHEL SELIGMAN