I built a simple machine out of scrap metal and copy machine parts to get the discs to spin together at a steady speed.  A pair of black light fixtures are hidden inside the suitcase so that the eyes  appear to glow while they are spinning.  The lenses from overhead projectors are mounted in front of the eyes to distort the effect slightly and give them a more unsettling effect.  I’m still not sold on the overall character of the piece however.  I will be experimenting with eyebrows, ears, horns and what have you until I feel everything looks right.

The first began with the good fortune of finding an old suitcase, and reel to reel tape recorder that had a very similar bronze-gold-brown color scheme.  Once stripped down, the tape recorder had a very obvious face look to it.  I still have some florescent painted spiral discs that I used in a sculpture many years ago.  The idea was to get the discs spinning behind the eye sockets with a hypnotic effect.

Often a projects real value is that it leads to a better a project.  Feeling luke warm about the piece described above, I put it aside and came up with another variation that so far seems more successful.  I had saved the front portion of a sewing machine cover from my recent Under the Sea project.  It is interesting to see how vastly different uses can be found for the same object.  Here I decided to use the shape as a head.  A pair of brass pipe clamps and ceramic drawer pulls made great eyes so it was just a matter of making everything fit together. 

When I have a pretty good idea that the character of a piece will be successful it is easier to dig in and build time consuming mechanisms.  Here I used the motor from the bill intake portion of an ATM machine with some linkages from old film projector equipment (with a few custom parts of course).  An old radio face plate frames it all nicely and reveals the mechanism in a way that suggests gnashing teeth.

The  inside is lined with velvet for a sort of “internal anatomy” feel, and an LED fixture provides light for the eyes.