There was three main things that inspired me to the build the pole dancers ( I call the piece 'Peepshow')1.

1. I admit that one of the main things driving me to build the dancers was to see if I could actually turn a pile of old scrapped 12V motors and other bits of rubbish that I had lying on my workshop floor into something erotic...or sexy.....It was an interesting challenge.....and often made me laugh..... as I looked at a pair of moving buttocks in my workshop vice and adjusted the motor to get the movement just right.....then a friend would come in and go..."oh no...not like that...its gotta be more like this....."...(..and before you knew it he was swinging round a scaff pole).I quickly realised that I would have to get a computer involved to control them....the motors would have to be turned on and off at precise times to get the dancers' movement fluid. I ended up using a simple DMX theatre lighting programme that basically turns all the motors on and off at different times...(...I think I succeeded...they are sexy.....and the feedback I've had from both men and women..seems to confirms this.!? Well....its true of one of the dancers anyway. The first dancer I built is far better than the second....her movements are more fluid and subtle....(she's everyone favourite.)...with the second I really wanted her to do a high kick..and this led to problems...

2. I decided to go for the CCTV camera heads..because at the time, in all the media, there was that business going on about "sexed-up" dossiers.....sexy dossiers?...sexy CCTV cameras?? I could see a link between the two as the concept of surveilence was sold to the British public with 'sexed-up' statistics about the threat of crime and terrorism. Britain is obsessed with surveilence and CCTV cameras are the foot soldiers of this phenomena...

3. With the above in mind...I decided to make the robots pole-dancers....and call the piece "PEEPSHOW" ......linking surveilence with voyerism....We are now all living in a peepshow with these mechanical peeping toms on every street corner..( about the same time...I read that a CCTV camera 'monitor' had been suspended from Worchester Police station because loads of CCTV footage had been found to contain close-ups of women's tits and arse as they walked around the city centre...?....mechanical peeping toms..etc)