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MONK Magazine – People
Brooks Coleman
by Michael Lane
May 15, 1999

FULL METAL G-STRING : Brooks Coleman, Pioneer of Industrial Lingerie, Austin, TX

Brooks 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.