Overview

Working this semester with mentor, Lauren Fensterstock, has been instrumental in the evolution of my thesis installation, “Erosive Tension” In the prior semester I explored multiple sculptural interventions and video projections with the aid of computer generated mockups. The focus for this semester was in identifying which elements of my planned interventions strengthened and supported my message as well as identifying areas where I was over-complicating and cluttering the phenomenological experience for the viewer. This process of reduction also led to experiments and refinements to the installation lighting, culminating in two separate lighting rigs, one for work-lighting and one for installation-lighting. The process of trying out multiple lighting strategies and arrangements was crucial in determining which interventions were and weren’t working as well as helping me gain deeper insight on how to use lighting to guide the viewer through the key elements of the installation.

Directly below is a brief overview of the current arrangement and lighting for “Erosive Tension”.
Installation-space dimensions: 607 square feet, length: 37’9″, width: 13’5″, ceiling height: 13′, Concrete structure 14′ x 14′ x 51″

• “Anthropocene Landscape” (the piece emerging from the brick wall)
• “Memorial to Decay” (the form coming down from the ceiling and the convex basin collecting debris and rust)
• Significant erosive and weathering events present in the room have been emphasized and documented.

Another area of growth this semester has been my research and writing under the guidance of Jen Hall. The work undertaken in Jen’s class has allowed me to locate my practice and connect with a deeper pool of interdisciplinary influences. Specifically, an understanding of New Materialism has enabled me to reexamine, long standing rituals and practices such as deconstructing and fragmenting previously completed works into new incarnations, and the techniques I employ to weather and erode the surfaces of my pieces. Understanding how thinking can be shaped and influenced by our interactions with materials, what Christopher Bardt calls soft-thinking, helped me view my art practice as a way of internalizing and gaining visceral knowledge of the natural forces that are constantly transforming, reclaiming, and redefining the world around us. Robert Smithson’s site-specific and non-site works and his writings, along with Miwon Kwon’s historical perspective on the evolution of site-specificity have allowed me to identify areas in my installation, where I am combining and reshuffling elements of both non-sites and site-specific art under one roof. Through the readings and writings this semester, I have developed tools to mine my work and actions in search of deeper meaning and in return this has enriched and influenced my practice.

My research and preliminary essays in preparation for my thesis can be found in the “Thesis Writing“ section of this blog. Specifically, the essay “The Merging Terranes of the Anthropocene Landscape“ is a good introduction into the rational of my thesis work.

“Anthropocene Landscape” (detail shots)

 

“Memorial to Decay” (detail shots)

 

Interactive version of “Erosive Tension” and Experimental Animations

I have been researching technologies and mechanisms for creating an online virtual project that can serve as a repository and record for all the research, documentation and revelations gathered during my time meditating and working in this space. In this area, Sarah Jenkins’ mentorship has also been crucial. The knowledge I have gained in the experimental animation class will be crucial to the design and development of this virtual space. I am currently in conversation with the creators of Torosiete Museum, a virtual museum focusing on immersive fine arts exhibitions. My goal and hope is to collaborate with their team to create and immersive virtual experience that supports the physical installation and serves as a permanent record of the project moving forward. The animations below will be part of this interactive experience.

• • “Flux” (duration 2 minutes)
    An exploration of impermanence as a recycling force. It explores the duality of human intervention through maintenance as a transformative force that is both restorative and corrosive. In other words, there is an entropic element to our efforts to reverse natural erosion which ends up contributing to impermanence.
    

• • “Liquid Rust” (duration 2 minutes)
    Iron is the most abundant element on Earth by mass. In the form of ochre it is one of the first materials we used for creative expression. Our relationship with iron chronicles our technological progress, our increasing ambitions and their consequences to our planet. Our success in smelting and shaping iron led to the iron age. Ongoing advances in iron-based technologies fed our conquest driven cultures. Iron’s strength, hardness, and flexibility, embody the ideals of immortality and permanence. Iron is our shield and weapon, in our desire to conquer impermanence, and rise above nature.
  • However, contrary to this symbolism, iron is far from invincible and immutable. The oxidizing of iron and its transformation into rust is representative of the gradual reclaiming and recycling that is integral to maintaining a natural balance. The cyclical stages of iron: from oxidized dust, to iron ore, and back to oxidized dust, links the past, present, and future. Constant change is the only constant.
  • Our relationship with iron runs deeper than history, technology, and culture. Iron is the essential element in our blood which carries oxygen to all our cells. The process by which oxygen binds to the iron in our hemoglobin (a process comparable to rusting) is the reason our blood is red. “Liquid Rust” is an artistic meditation on the rusting process.
    

• • “Chronoception” (duration 10 minutes)
    “The study of time perception or chronoception is a field within psychology, cognitive linguistics and neuroscience that refers to the subjective experience, or sense, of time, which is measured by someone’s own perception of the duration of the indefinite and unfolding of events.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception
  • In this short film we get a glimpse of the world through the aleph. Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, “The Aleph”, this aleph is a small breach in the wall of “Erosive Tension.” Like the allegory of Pluto’s Cave, the view through this opening is a glimpse of the world through the lens of our limitations.

• • “Hydro” (duration 10 minutes)
    A contemplation on water. Water permeates our world, nurturing, eroding, corroding, and transforming the path along its journey.
    

Additional documentation and experiments

• The rusted doorway that is part of the installation space, has been neglected through the years. The exemption being, the periodic application of insulation foam and fiber to keep the water pipes from freezing in the winter. The doorway has been a significant aesthetic and poetic influence in my work. Last summer, a piece of insulation fell off revealing the extent of the brick wall’s deterioration and the minimal protective intervention that is preventing the room from deteriorating faster. The break in the insulation, which I have dubbed “The Aleph” in honor of Jorge Luis Borge’s short story, also shares commonalities with Duchamp’s “Étant donnés” and Plato’s allegory of the cave. For me the opening through the insulation represents the shortcomings of our senses, including our sense of time. It is the inspiration for “Chronoception” as well as other animated experiments into timescales and erosion.

 

• In my installation, I am using lighting to emphasize major interventions, subtly highlight minor details, and obscure non-important areas in shadow. In the case of the Aleph I have chosen to emphasize its presence by creating and artificial shaft of light that draws the viewer’s attention to the opening and calls for a closer examination of the world that lies on the other side. This is also the case with the lower right corner of “Anthropocene Landscape” where I have brought attention to the empty void, left behind by a brick reduced to dust. The erosion of bricks through spalling (freeze and thaw cycles) is random and sporadic, barely affecting most bricks and completely disintegrating others.

• The covered window in the room. The majority of the time, the metallic laminate that covers this windows obscures all evidence of the world that lies beyond, but early in the mornings on sunny days, the top of the water from the canal glistens and the dancing lights create a pattern through the perforated metal, revealing the water that is in constant contact with the bricks of this structure.