Machine Project, founded by curator and artist Mark Allen, operated as a loose confederation of artists, writers, musicians, scientists, and intellectuals. Based out of a storefront in Echo Park, the organization hosted cross-disciplinary installations, workshops, and events known for their absurdist humor and buoyant energy. Beginning with
A Field Guide to LACMA in 2008, Machine Project collaborated with museums to explore the conventions and boundaries of institutional practice through interventions and performances. Surveying the broad range of the organization’s program, which encompassed everything from an opera performed by dogs to a handball court painted with op-art murals, Allen explained that "Machine is guided by the belief that everything human beings do is interesting, and the relationship between the different things that people do are even more so."
Machine Project began commissioning hand-printed posters early in its history. Collaborators included both established designers such as Ed Fella and Willem Henri Lucas, as well as emerging practitioners and students from the California Institute of Arts, where Allen completed his graduate work. He provided few guidelines and scant event details to the designers, instead allowing them space for creative experimentation. As a result, the posters formed what he called "an alternative history" of the organization, as well as a visual archive of graphic design in an era when the increasing dominance of web-based communications led to rapid changes in aesthetics and processes. While the posters were sometimes displayed in the organization’s storefront window to promote upcoming events, the majority were completed shortly before the happenings they advertised and instead served mainly as commemorative artifacts for participants and attendees.
Staci Steinberger, Associate Curator, Decorative Arts and Design, 2021