Fatal Attraction

Josh Agle created three fairground attraction machines between 2005 and 2007. The Wheel of Ultimate Fate determines your destiny, Zulo Knows All tells you where you will be in a years time and Vice Tester finds your secret vice.  With a typical Shag style, these three devices are graphically clean and inviting but with dark foreboding undertones.

Wheel of Ultimate Fate

In 2005 Shag worked with a Las Vegas gaming company to create the Wheel of Ultimate Fate for the Push Your Luck exhibition at the OX-OP Gallery in Minneapolis in Minnesota on the 4^th January 2005 to the 30^th June 2005. The Wheel of Ultimate Fate is a meter in diameter and includes 12 segments, each telling you your fate:

1. Impotence
2. Reincarnation
3. Misfortune
4. Satisfaction
5. Fortune
6. Tough Break
7. Eternal Bliss
8. A date with Chops
9. a tall cool one
10. You’re Mine
11. Pearly Gates
12. On no…

Following the Push Your Luck exhibition the Wheel of Ultimate Fate now resides at Shag’s house in Palm Springs.

Zulo Knows All!

In 2007 Shag repurposed a vintage palm reading machine for the Baby Tattoo Carnival of Astounding Art at the Oceanside Museum of Art in California on the 22^nd August 2015 to the 3^rd January 2016. The amusement machine named Zulo Knows All costs a quarter for you to be told your destiny.

The image states ‘Zulo Knows All! Where will you be a year from now?’ and there ten possible lights:

1. The Morgue
2. A Strip Joint
3. Tropical Beach
4. On the TV News
5. Mental Institution
6. The White House
7. In The Army
8. The Street
9. A Mansion
10. Las Vegas

Shag demonstrates how the machine works in the following two photos, insert the quarter, place your palm on the machine and the lights will flicker and settle on your fate.

The machine has reappeared a decade later in the refurbished Shag Store Palm Springs.

The Zulo Knows All! machine took a trip to The Art of Shag exhibition at the Comic-Con Museum in San Diego from September to December 2019 before returning to the Shag Store in Palm Springs.

Vice Tester

For The Flesh is Willing exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum In 2007, Shag repurposed a vintage fortune-telling machine to create the Vice Tester. Shown above, pin-up model Sabina Kelley tries out the Vice Tester (Bizzare magazine). The Vice Tester was displayed alongside the Zulo Knows All! at The Flesh is Willing exhibition (below).

All surfaces are covered by Shag’s illustrations, and for a quarter the machine will tell you what your secret vice is:

1. You are without vice
2. Booze
3. Greed
4. Bad Television
5. Sex
6. Tobacco
7. Drugs
8. Shopping
9. Smut
10. Gambling

There is a video of the Vice Tester being used on Vimeo and a couple of good reviews on NotCot and the Tiki Chick. The Vice Tester machine moved to Frankie’s Tiki Room in Las Vegas where it still lives today.