engineering

Mark Pauline

Mark Pauline is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mark Pauline rather than just read about it. In short: Mark Pauline (born December 14, 1953) is an American performance artist, new media artist, and machine inventor. He is known as founder and director of Survival Research Laboratories.

Key takeaways

Mark Pauline belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mark Pauline to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mark Pauline from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Mark Pauline (born December 14, 1953) is an American performance artist, new media artist, and machine inventor. He is known as founder and director of Survival Research Laboratories.

Early life and education After high school he had a job at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, as a sub-contractor maintaining target robots. He is a 1977 graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Career Pauline founded SRL in 1978 and it is considered the premier practitioner of "industrial performing arts", and the forerunner of large scale machine performance. Although acknowledged as a major influence on popular competitions pitting remote-controlled robots and machines against each other, such as BattleBots and Robot Wars, Pauline shies away from rules-bound competition preferring a more anarchic approach. Machines are liberated and re-configured away from the functions they were originally meant to perform. Pauline has written of SRL, "Since its inception SRL has operated as an organization of creative technicians dedicated to re-directing the techniques, tools, and tenets of industry, science, and the military away from their typical manifestations in practicality, product or warfare." Since its beginning through the end of 2006, SRL has conducted about 48 shows, with long titles such as "A Cruel and Relentless Plot to Pervert the Flesh of Beasts to Unholy Uses". In the summer of 1982, Pauline severely damaged his right hand while experimenting with solid rocket fuel. In August 1990, ArtPark, a state-sponsored arts festival in Lewiston, New York, cancelled a Pauline performance when it turned out he intended "to cover a sputtering Rube Goldberg spaceship with numerous Bibles" that would "serve as thermal protective shields" and be burned to ashes in the course of the performance. According to Pauline "I like to make machines that can just do their own shows... machines that can do all that machines in the science fiction novels can do. I want to be there to make those dreams real."

References

Sterling, Bruce. "Is Phoenix Burning". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 2024-06-21. McDermon, Daniel (January 5, 2018). "Fire-Breathing Robots Bring Anarchy to a Chelsea Art Gallery". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.

External links Survival Research Labs Appearance on KRON-TV's "SFO with Steve Jamison" variety show in 1981 (San Francisco, Calif.) National Public Radio report on SRL, with link to radio broadcast comprehensive July 1996 Wired magazine article on Pauline and SRL by Bruce Sterling

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mark Pauline

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mark Pauline claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mark Pauline before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mark Pauline ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mark Pauline

In research: Mark Pauline appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mark Pauline in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mark Pauline is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1953 births, 20th-century American inventors, American artist stubs, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mark Pauline outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mark Pauline in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mark Pauline means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mark Pauline out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mark Pauline in simple terms?

Mark Pauline (born December 14, 1953) is an American performance artist, new media artist, and machine inventor. He is known as founder and director of Survival Research Laboratories.

Why does Mark Pauline matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mark Pauline?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mark Pauline.