Delineate the darkness into rations
Project developed at and made possible by the
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE, 2023
Site-specific sound and animation installation with piano strings, Arduino, steel rods, steel sheets, natural light, motors, hand-blown glass, cement, ash, iron gates, glass strings, architecture, and a three-channel projection.
This site-specific installation is rooted in the physics and metaphysics of the transformation of matter, such as during imploding of a neutron star. Matter that structures space, the cartesian structure of our perception of space, and the perception of the transformation by human and non-human animals.
Each sculpture in a sprawling installation is a site-specific analog sound element. The sound is created by vibrating micromotors controlled by Arduinos. The motors are attached to bass piano strings that are attached to walls, gates and other sculptural and architectural elements. The hand-blown glass pieces have string-width specific indentations created when the glass is still hot so the strings and glass “fit” as do pieces of the puzzle. The cement pipes were cast with cardboard tubes inside, the cardboard was incinerated once the cement was cured to produce an ashy burned out core.
The piece's title and structure are inspired by Vilem Flusser’s “Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste.” Part poetic rumination, part science fiction and post-humanist rumination, the treatise raises questions about the perception of space as it relates to the physiological structure of our bodies.
An excerpt:
“As the head began to distance itself from the ground, the bony labyrinth was dislodged within the inner ear. A consequence of this is that space became three-dimensional to us in a specific, Cartesian sense- it began to constitute the very framework of our perceptible world. The elevation of the head, moreover, enabled the development of the neocortex, which is the center of all higher mental functions, including language. This development, that is, allowed the world to become meaningful. The elevation of the body carriage also resulted in a living being with free-swinging arms that walks on two legs, and a result of the capacity for ambulation was the division of time into three regions: the present (that which we are bumping into as we walk), the past (that which we have already passed by and experienced), and the future (that which we long for and desire, that is, where we are going). And thus time, as we experience it, “strolls” along– it is “undergone”.”
The jumping-off point for the work was the consideration of the moment the neutron star implodes: the creation of glass from sand, the ash from burned-out elements, and the ash creating less tangible, more fluid structures.
