Survival Research Labs, founded in 1978 by Mark Pauline, Eric Werner and Matt Heckert was the group that most directly and profoundly initiated the entire genre of modern machine art. Every battle-bot, junkyard war, exploding machine event and mechanical myth-busting sound bite owes this protean group and it’s grinning avatar Mark Pauline a tip O’ the hat. In the mid-90’s there was a lot of cross-over between SRL and Cacophony.