Christian Ristow (born July 2, 1970) is an American robotic artist. He is known for his robotic performance art under the name Robochrist Industries, his

animatronics Animatronics refers to mechatronic puppets. They are a modern variant of the automaton and are often used for the portrayal of characters in films and in theme park attractions. It is a multidisciplinary field integrating puppetry, anatomy a ...

work in film and television, and his large-scale interactive sculptures.

Life and career

From 1993 to 1997, Ristow volunteered for the seminal robotic performance art collective Survival Research Laboratories in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. During these years Ristow was involved in several SRL performances, contributing not only props but also, particularly in the years 1996 and 1997, robots that he had constructed. During this period Ristow also participated in several collaborative performances with another San Francisco based performance group, The Seemen, including the often cited Hellco performance at the 1996 Burning Man festival. In 1997 Ristow relocated to

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to work in the field of

for film and television. Los Angeles also provided fresh audiences uninitiated to the world of robot performance art, which was already becoming well known in northern California. Shortly thereafter the name "Robochrist Industries" was first used and a small group of volunteers coalesced to form a working performance group. The gradual inclusion of artistic and technical professionals from disciplines such as film special effects and the aerospace industry helped fuel larger and more frequent shows over the ensuing years. Starting in 1999 Ristow and cohorts began performing at the

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (commonly called the Coachella Festival or simply Coachella) is an annual music and arts festival held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, in the Coachella Valley in the Colorado Desert. ...

. These shows represented the apex of the group's activities, both in terms of fully realized spectacle and audience exposure. The 2006 film "Coachella" features footage culled from Robochrist performances from several different years as well as a brief interview with Ristow. In early 2006 Ristow again relocated, this time leaving Los Angeles for

Taos, New Mexico Taos is a town in Taos County in the north-central region of New Mexico in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Initially founded in 1615, it was intermittently occupied until its formal establishment in 1795 by Nuevo México Governor Fernando Cha ...

, effectively killing Robochrist Industries. The relocation to New Mexico marked a significant turn in Ristow's artistic output, away from robot-based ensemble performances, and in the direction of large-scale interactive sculpture. The list of notable large-scale sculptures built since that time includes Hand of Man (2008), Fledgling (2011), Face Forward (2011), Becoming Human (2014), and With Open Arms We Welcomed That Which Would Destroy Us (2018). These pieces have been shown at Burning Man, the

Big Day Out The Big Day Out (BDO) was an annual music festival that was held in five Australian cities: Sydney, Melbourne, Gold Coast, Adelaide, and Perth, as well as Auckland, New Zealand. The festival was held during summer, typically in January of eac ...

(Australia), The

Voodoo Experience The Voodoo Music + Arts Experience (formerly The Voodoo Music Experience), commonly referred to as Voodoo or Voodoo Fest, is a multi-day music and arts festival held in City Park in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Voodoo Experience has hosted more ...

(

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

), Maker Faire, and The

Glastonbury Festival Glastonbury Festival (formally Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts and known colloquially as Glasto) is a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts that takes place in Pilton, Somerset, England. In addition to contemp ...

(

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References

External links

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Burning Man image gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ristow, Christian Robotic art Living people 1970 births American performance artists