Photograph by Machine Project.
Generating analogies for the unlikely workings of Machine Project is one of Mr. Allen's skills.
He rented the storefront for Machine Project before knowing what he wanted to do with it, and programming remains unpredictable.
Machine Project shares this democratic ideal, which in programming corners would be called open-source and in art circles sounds a lot like Dada.
He called it "A Machine Project's Field Guide to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art," as if the goal were to explore the natural habitat of the museum.
Brooklyn-based photographer Carlo Van de Roer exhibited aura photos as part of a visual art installation known as the Portrait Machine Project.
"Mark runs Machine Project, but it's really a network of people like us," said Margaret Wertheim, co-founder of the Institute for Figuring.
— was devised by Jimmy Fusil and Mike Wait, members of the Los Angeles-based alt-music duo PopSoda, and was produced as part of a collaboration between the artist collective Machine Project and the hosting gallery.
On the roster for December is an "on-call poetry-delivery service" offered by the poet Joshua Beckman, who vows to deliver poems door to door within a two-mile radius of Machine Project with "postmanlike courage".
Since then Mr. Allen has developed more of a résumé-worthy career, earning his master's degree at the California Institute of the Arts and starting Machine Project before joining the faculty of Pomona College.
