Wood, Metal, Water Meet Geekery 

02:00 AM Oct. 18, 2005 PT

In Manhattan, geek cred can be found in unexpected places -- even tucked into a room on the second floor of an unassuming downtown Manhattan office building.

Here, inside 125 Maiden Lane, lies a tiny, temporary bit of tech paradise, in the form of Wood Metal Water, a free interactive art exhibit running through Nov. 4 at Redhead, a small new gallery in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's office.

Among the sculptures visitors can see and interact with are Paul Davies' video-game inspired end tables, Jeff DeGolier's spinning robots and Hendrik Gerrits' splashy water sculpture.

The exhibit is meant to provoke visitors to interact viscerally with the art, said guest curator and exhibit participant Jamie Allen. So the pieces must have "a little more amplitude than pushing a button and getting a sound -- something physical, something experiential."

Allen's theme is hard to ignore as you explore exhibits that range from the obviously mechanical to the confoundingly interactive.

Davies' pieces, painted glossy black and collectively called The Curious Furniture of Ned Troide, are meant to be listened to, cooked on and even drank from. The set consists of a fake fireplace slash real hot-dog grill, Jack Daniel's fountain and AC/DC music mixer -- all operational.

They evoke a personality near and dear to him -- that of Ned Troide, an '80s video-game champ, who played the game Defender for about 62 hours straight. Although Davies doesn't know Troide personally, the furniture represents his personality. Based on circumstantial evidence -- a photo from an '80s issue of Life magazine -- Davies believes Troide has a deep affection for heavy metal.

He took the idea of Troide in as a persona for himself when creating this work, which he constructed from modified antique-store furniture.

"Ned Troide and me, we're not so different. So I feel like there's a certain genuineness about it," Davies said.

Some work is a bit more mysteriously interactive, such as DeGolier's found-object UFOs, titled Jam Session (A Small Taxonomy). Suspended from the ceiling near one of the gallery's entryways, the tiny, trashy quartet is made up of things like discarded motors and old plastic bags. They signal a sort of invasion or attack, but with their bright colors and whirs and twirls, the small machines look almost cheerful -- perhaps deceptively so.

There's no doubt that Gerrits' sculpture, Untitled, is deceptive. Located in the building's entryway, it sports two plastic boxes balancing on the ends of a pole, slowly collecting water from a fountain. Opening two of the many lobby doors causes the water to drop back into the pool, sometimes startling passersby.

Like other exhibits on display, it shows there can be more to a sculpture than what meets the eye.