A Brooklyn-based artist named David Ellis debuted a performance piece last night at Theory, in the meatpacking district: Hell’s Angel vs. DJ RoyOwl. NY Mag described it as a “percussive cockfight between a mechanized, Ellis-designed drum sculpture and DJ JTram (playing the role of DJ RoyOwl), dressed in a bird costume made from drinking straws.”

NY Mag is lame and won’t let me embed their video. But this is a screenshot of the mechanized drum sculpture (I think?). (If only to hop on the bandwagon from Amber’s last post, I’m calling it a robot.) Click here to go see the video.

Looks pretty amazing, though there really isn’t enough in the video to get a full sense of the performance. But my friend Simon helped set up the piece, and gives a bit of background/context:

The attendees were mainly associated with the high-end designer clothing store who gave David a residency. If you look closely you can see me hanging out near the “Hell’s Angel” piece near the end. It was an exciting and exhausting time, lots of work for a three hour event and somehow, it all went off without a hitch. The live music performance by the various winged beat-beasts (robot and puppet alike), sample wranglers and percussionists was amazing, though rather poorly recorded in the linked video. I have never before heard a cardboard box and couple of bottles sound so huge and brilliant. I hope that I never again have to setup that flying beast — my fingers are cut up and swollen. It has been loads of fun working with David (the artist) and Roberto (the composer) — with luck we’ll have more to share in a few months from a new piece.

Go robots!