Automaton by Paul Spooner: Dummies with Ale

Titled Intermittent motion from two cams arranged as an 'AND' gate this is one of several new pieces by Paul Spooner.

Of this piece he says:
"I have been trying to get a good title and decided yesterday on;
Intermittent motion from two cams arranged as an 'AND' gate. This avoids any mention of the dummy scene but has the virtue of
describing the mechanism that makes the fifth dummy from the left look at his watch every so often. I was going to give them different things to hold, the names of all of them challenging to the ventriloquist: eg. beach ball, poppadom, marmalade, pineapple but went for seven traditional bottles of beer (labeled "beautiful beer bottled by british brewers"). They are a bit like the bottles of bass in Manet's bar of the folies bergere, which was painted ten years before the invention of the crown cap - hence the corks (but really I think they would have had hard rubber stoppers)."

This and many other photographs with commentary of new pieces by Paul Spooner can be seen on this page.