Brooks Coleman
by Michael Lane
May 15, 1999
FULL METAL G-STRING:
Brooks Coleman, Pioneer of Industrial
Lingerie
Austin, TX
rooks Coleman is
the crown prince of
geekdom. One can easily imagine him as a
squirrely
teenager tinkering in a back room lab while the
bulk of humanity was out getting
laid. In fact, he describes himself as
"aesthetically challenged." But that's a
self-deprecating critique of his own looks. For
this geek knows a thing or two about beauty,
and beauty's interface with technology. He lives
and breathes that interface.
Brooks always knew he was going to be an
artist. By age ten he received his first
set of chisels and gouges, which he used to
carve wooden sculptures. They were inspired
by beautiful women, none of whom would model
for him. Due to the influence of his
father, a government scientist in the space
industry, Brooks began working with metal
and electronic gadgetry. When he graduated
high school Brooks was already creating
kinetic art and robots-as-art. In 1989 Brooks and
three compatriots founded The Robot
Group for the sole purpose of designing, building
and operating robots. This talented assemblage
evolved into a think tank centered around
experimental robotics design, raising the
eyebrows of the more staid engineering
community. Ultimately they received recognition
from the national media, including stories in
Newsweek and the Wall Street
Journal. Their crowning achievement was a
$30,000 privately funded martial arts robot.
Unfortunately, as it neared completion, the robot
became mired in controversy, ultimately leading
to a lawsuit.
Following his exit from the group, Brooks took on
a new challenge. Sheila Murphy,
an Austin performance artist who was also part
of the band Liquid Mice, knew of Brooks'
work with metal sculptures. As part of an event
at a local nightclub, Sheila wanted
to do an erotic fashion show, and asked Brooks
to make her and a few friends some metal
bras. Brooks, always suffering from a deficit in
the girl department, was more than
happy to outfit these lovely ladies. And thus was
born not only "industrial lingerie," but a
persuasive gimmick for the ultimate geek to
position naked women by his side.
MONK: You have worked on extremely complex
robotics projects, received national acclaim
for your skills as an engineer, and now you're
designing industrial bras. Are robots
a thing of the past?
BC: I have been through so many different
things with different groups on really big
robotics projects, climaxing with the martial arts
robot. The body of it alone cost
$30,000, and the person who financed the
project still hasn't paid me for the rest
of it and ultimately sued to get all of his money
back because he just didn't like it.
That pretty much got me burned out on really
big outlandish projects. The lawsuit
caused such a rift in the group that we stopped
all work on the computer control,
so it's basically a manual push-button robot at
the moment.
MONK: So you possess the robot?
BC: One of the partners in the group has the
robot. I personally would like to finish
it or find somebody else to finance it. That's the
one project I'm most proud of
as far as robots go.
MONK: Tell me a little more about your other
robots.
BC: Well, I got really famous for this mechanical
pit bull, a big pneumatic robot
with gnashing teeth. It was seven-foot long and
only a foot-and-a-half high. These
days it's pretty much worn out from doing
shows. The bigger the shows we would do
the more people would want to see real,
honest-to-God, computerized, controlled robots
with
artificial intelligence. It just became so demanding.
Our yearly budget wouldn't
even come close to the maintenance costs for
our robots. I finally decided to bow
out of the group as a member.
MONK: Can you describe one of those
shows?
BC: My favorite shows were the last batch we
did at a junior high school. We had several
different rooms. My robotics arms were used on
mock-up space shuttle simulators,
where the students would have this big tent-like
canvas space shuttle with all these
computers. We had a bunch of experiments,
and a robotics arm was used to release a
helium balloon which sent up a satellite. We had
our regular radio-controlled blimp
flying in the other gymnasium and just all kinds of
really cool projects throughout
the place. At one of our shows we had Timothy
Leary show up.
MONK: From the press you received it sounds
like the high-tech, virtual reality, robotics
groups nationwide started to take you
seriously.
BC: One of the original robot builders and
designers, the grandfather of robotics,
Ralph Mosher, who built the first giant walking
elephant kind of thing, happened
to be in town. He came by and said, "Boy.
I've seen people get millions of dollars
and not get anywhere near that type of success
with robots." So that was a big feather in
our
cap. It was a really good learning experience
being with The Robot Group. The group
was made up of professional artists and
engineers, totally different ways of thinking.
I was raised by engineers. My father was a
physicist for NASA. He was a senior engineer
at the vibration testing place where they
basically shake things until they break.
MONK: Did you go to school to study
engineering?
BC: Weeelll, I went to UT just to hang out. I didn't
actually take classes but I knew
a lot of professors and I'd sit in on a class
occasionally. But I tutored in electronics,
photography and art.
MONK: So you're like a mad scientist who is
driven to understand art and technology.
BC: Not really mad just moderately
frustrated.
MONK: How did robotics lead to industrial lingerie
and the metal bra?
BC: I had gotten fed up working with large
organizations doing large shows. I decided
to focus on something I could do just myself. The
bras had been on the back burner
for awhile. I'd initially made three bras for Sheila
Murphy's erotic fashion show.
I'd been doing a lot of raves with my robots but
my robots were starting to wear out.
So I had this idea to do industrial fashion shows
along with my robotics displays.
Being in the rave scene was a good place to
show that kind of stuff. I started making
a mass-produced version of the designs I'd
originally come up with, and that just
mushroomed.
In the past three years I've created over 200
bras and made connections with boutiques.
MONK: So initially you sold your first bras at
raves as a vendor and then word started
to spread.
BC: Yeah, word of mouth and selling to people in
bands, strippers and so forth.
MONK: What are the materials these bras are
made of?
BC: The main line of bras is made of
aluminum.
MONK: This has never been done before?
BC: Not that I know of. I've seen some really
lame metal bras on the Internet. They're
very formless. They don't enhance the female
figure at all. They're just chunks of
abstract metal, which are kind of cool to some
degree, but as far as when somebody
thinks of something that would enhance
women's beauty there's not much out there.
Over
the past couple years I've focused on forms that
are adjustable, form-fitting and
comfortable. I'm very conscious of all the
different parts of the body and how the
body moves. In the robotics work, I've done a lot
of research on the human body as a form.
Actually for awhile I was researching the
feasibility of building sex robots.
MONK: I had no idea you could build sex
robots.
BC: Uh huh. And for those of us who are, how
shall I say, aesthetically challenged,
who are not on every woman's A list of
desirable people, they could come in quite
handy!
MONK: What happened to this plan?
BC: Well, after the development of the martial
arts robot, I realized that to build
a sex robot as opposed to a fighting robot would
end up being about $200,000.
MONK: Now, in the initial design of the bras you
studied the female anatomy?
BC: Right. I made plaster molds of my original
crew of about 10 female models who
used to do my shows with me. I have about four
or five A cups, about four Bs, two
Cs and one D.
MONK: One doesn't think "comfort"
when envisioning metal bras
.
BC: Right. The first thing people said when I
began making metal bras was, "Oh, that's
got to be painful." But most of my models
say they're quite comfortable, sometimes
more than regular bras.
MONK: What would we see at one of your
fashion shows?
BC: Well, it usually starts out with an hour or so
of my mechanical gizmos just running
automatically, irritating everybody in the audience
while they're waiting for the
bra show. Eventually, when I can get all of the
models dressed and ready, they'll
run through the show. I have lots of different
crowds and five acres of woods, so I have
lots of people camping out. It's generally a show
that goes until four or five in
the morning.
MONK: What do you call your shows?
BC: The Hot Tool Fashion Crew
Extravaganza.
MONK: I've heard your work called industrial
lingerie.
BC: It seems to be what the public is mostly
focused on. It gets the most attention
and brings out the most crowds. Well, I should
say it brings out the most male factor
in the crowd.
MONK: Other than the metal bras, do you do
metal panties?
BC: G-strings, different types of pieces to cover
what is legally required.
MONK: A big part of your clientele, I gather, are
dancers who work in adult clubs.
BC: Right. I've just recently started selling directly
to gentlemen's clubs like the
Yellow Rose. The boutiques sell a lot to the
dominatrix crowd in Austin. There's
apparently a much larger market for that stuff
than I thought.
MONK: So your line has expanded beyond metal
bras. Do you make something for men?
BC: I was making metal cock pieces and a piece
that fits like a glove with all the
appendages.
MONK: Why would people buy industrial
lingerie?
BC: For one thing you can do a lot with metal
that you can't do with fabric, support-wise;
getting by with minimal coverage yet stability.
Certain things like the spiraled
wire pieces use soft metal so you put it on and
it's sort of springy. It's kind of
like a body clasp. You can get a very sensuous
look with very minimal coverage.
MONK: Have any celebrities that you know of
worn your lingerie?
BC: Actually Patricia Ford and Lisa Boyles, two
Playboy models, wore them for their
Too Hot to Handle
calendar in '98. The photographer picked them
up at the Bizarre and called me to
make matching G-strings. I'm getting ready to
send a batch of stuff to Sandra Bullock.
MONK: If you could, in a sentence, tell us why
someone should buy your metal bra.
BC: Oh, gosh. To be the hippest, most beautiful
person you can possibly be. You can't
get hipper than a metal bra.
