Installation artist Peter William Holden's latest machine AutoGene puts a new twist on the familiar "Ghost in the Machine" theme. Holden's robotic machine evokes memories of the iconic Gene Kelly performance of "Singing in the rain" while opening and closing an arrangement of eight black umbrellas in a digitally choreographed dance number.

The work seems inspired by a kind of digital nostalgia mixed with the irresistable charm of old-fashioned musical boxes that have little ballerinas on top churning out mechanical pirouettes. However, in Holden's AutoGene a set of flapping umbrellas takes the place of the ballerinas. The work does not explore the possibilities of digital code in control of movements, instead it give the impression as if it could work just as well performing its dance based on the mechanical bumps embedded as coded intructions on an automatic piano wheel.

Read more about AutoGene is Holden's description of the work:

Busby Berkeley choreographed dancers to mimic the motions of machines and modern inventions. “AutoGene” is the flipside of this. It’s a simple aesthetic looking robot composed of eight modified umbrellas mounted in a circular pattern. A cocktail of air hoses and electrical cables join these umbrellas to a central computer which enables “AutoGene” to produce a choreographed dance to music which erodes the machine's mechanical qualities and transforms the mundane umbrellas into magical animated objects.

A video of the mechanical performance can be seen at the www.archive.org/details/AutoGene