Visual Verbal Journey: 2009

Community Arts Partnership

Winfield PAL Mural, Randallstown, Maryland

Sculptural Forms

Assignment: Site-specific collaborative installation

visual thought process:

Olafur Eliasson -The Weather Project

Tate, London (2003)

Curated by Susan May

The subject of the weather has long shaped the content of everyday conversation. In The Weather Project, the fourth in the annual Unilever Series of commissions for the Turbine Hall, Olafur Eliasson takes this ubiquitous subject as the basis for exploring ideas about experience, mediation and representation.

In this installation, representations of the sun and sky dominate the expanse of the Turbine Hall. A fine mist permeates the space, as if creeping in from the environment outside. Throughout the day, the mist accumulates into faint, cloud-like formations, before dissipating across the space. The ceiling of the Turbine Hall has disappeared, replaced by a reflection of the space below. At the far end of the hall is a giant semi-circular form made up of hundreds of mono-frequency lamps. The arc repeated in the mirror overhead produces a sphere of dazzling radiance linking the real space with the reflection. Generally used in street lighting, mono-frequency lamps emit light at such a narrow frequency that colours other than yellow and black are invisible, thus transforming the visual field around the sun into a vast duotone landscape.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/eliasson/about.htm

I too, was interested in light and the relationship between people and the weather, but I was focused on the way that people have created a concept of time that revolves around the sun.

The sundial is the oldest known device for the measurement of time and the most ancient of scientific instruments.

...and the way that people have tamed light to manipulate it according to their desire, rather than according to natural cycles of sunlight that our bodies have evolved with.

Sitting in my basement studio at 3am trying to finish my drawing homework under fluorescent light, I mused at what effect this might be having on my circadian rhythms.

Although circadian rhythms are endogenous ("built-in", self-sustained) in all plants and animals, they are adjusted to the environment by external cues called zeitgebers. The primary one of which is daylight, but they can be offset by artificial light. Circadian rhythms dictate clear patterns of core body temperature, brain wave activity, hormone production, cell regeneration and other biological activities.

Inspired by the human sundial, and our electrical era's degeneration of circadian rhythms, my collaborative partner and I began to piece together our installation in our basement studio.

The viewer enters the space in complete darkness, and is guided to stand in the center of the dial. The first light comes on, along with an electric hum, and the first mark on the dial is blackened with the viewer's shadow. One by one, each light is clicked on and off to the beat of a metronome that appears on one of the marks in the dial, until the viewer's shadow makes a complete travel to the other side of the dial, having gone through an entire virtual day in under a minute. The lights and sounds are turned off, and the viewer is guided out of the space in darkness.

Assignment: create a portrait or a narrative that involves a container or is contained

I chose portrait. A portrait of "my" culture. I found this discarded television on the side of the street, and thought, here is a container, a confinement--of the current mental state of this media-soaked culture. And then, what could I do to change its meaning? To contest this confinement?

Growing up, I was told to run along and play outside instead of sit in front of the tube all day. For this I cannot express my gratitude, and as a result I think I am a much fuller, dynamic, and curious person than I would have been with the false reality of the TV screen as my model for life. I instead became enthralled with the endless adventure I found outdoors, no mind the limited ecosystem that found room to thrive within my suburban neighborhood.

My sculpture became a plea for a more tangible form of stimulus, in young minds and in all minds, but especially the minds of my own culture which I am placed into by region, time, and chance.

This television is left unplugged, and with its abstract yet recognizable forms inside the viewing box, I hint at the necessity for a new reality.

Scans

Revisting Past Works

Drawing II Heritage/Myth Project, in progress, series:

So, after gathering the sole family legend of my great great great uncle Peter Hans Kallsen getting his tongue cut for speaking ill of the Germans who had taken over Denmark, I related the story to a very famous dissident: Guy Fawkes, who executed the plot to blow up the English House of Parliament on the Fifth of November, 1605.

With that I focused on the recurrence of nonconformity in my lineage, and also how that relates to me. I wanted to depict the feeling, the fear, the intimidations or hesitations that a dissident might encounter in his/her endeavors. Here is a depiction of the steps leading to the basement of the English House of Parliament, where Guy Fawkes was caught before he could ignite the barrels of gunpowder that were hidden there. His punishment was execution.

Sculptural Forms Repeated Unit Project, Meaning in Material:

When I figured out the material I wanted to use, I dove into the biological, historical, and current connotations of the maple seed.

Turns out their un-noticeability has caught them a lot of attention:

The Pentagon is giving the war profiteers over at Lockheed Martin a nice chunk of change to develop a spy camera modeled after a maple seed. Loaded up with two rockets, the wee, single-winged camera would be used in large clusters over war zones, capturing loads of imagery to give a complete picture of a situation. In addition to the camera and rockets on board, the devices will be stocked with telemetry, communications, navigation and a power source. They look pretty neat to me, but it'd be nice if we didn't have a use for them by the time they're developed.
www.democraticunderground.com

I originally just wanted one very long string of them in the form of a double helix, as a monument of the binding factor in which all known living organisms are brought together: a common link of life in relation to the vital role that a seed plays--the genetic link and dispersal agent between successive generations of plants. Then I started to look at the evolutionary aspect of the form: the "whirlybird" wing and the motion it incites.
The seeds are adapted this way so that when they fall from the "mother" tree, they helicopter themselves away from her shade so they have a place of their own to soak up the sun.
Man-made aircrafts are actually inspired by forms like these found in nature, except in their attempt to mimic, Man can only create something that is hundreds of times less efficient than the original.

In the end I created this paradox: a man-made contraption whose form implies the intention of flying or floating away with the seeds, but one of which will actually be a failure when put to the test. The object itself is made from these seeds that have already been perfectly sculpted by nature to fly away from the tree, but in this case a human has intervened, unsuccessfully, with nature's model.