Construct 3: An installation.
I still would like to develop this. I can hear the sounds really vividly. I even like the crudeness of the image.
Artificially generating bone and destroying it within an architectural space. This proposal was for the creation of a laboratory of sorts that both created and destroyed the armature of our bodies, (bone). Placing it in this context allowed there to be a visceral sense including noise, (spinning heavy bowls being scraped away by the metal object freely spinning inside the bowl), in what is usually a silent process in the laboratory. It was as if the silent technologies we generate through the sciences to support our bodies, were instead made grotesque and loud as if they had their own life and occupied their own space.
Description of components:
1st element
Two central forms consist of a very massive, heavy bowl, cast in plaster containing aggregates of minerals including the minerals of bone. It is dense, heavy, and rough-textured. The bowl is mounted on a wheel, offset from the center. The wheel is rotated at varying speeds, creating an orbit of rotation for the bowl, with random forces applied to the spin. Inside the bowl is a cast metal object. This object orbits inside the bowl, on its surface, because of the forces at play from the spinning bowl. The friction of this object, against the surface of the bowl, causes the bowl to erode, and the dust from this erosion falls out of a hole in the bottom of the bowl, and is deposited along a path, below the bowl, described by the bowls rotation. Over time, the form of the bowl disappears.
The spinning of these bowls, and the friction of the metal object, causes a sound which fills the space. The random changing of the speed of the spinning, and the varying rates of erosion, change the tone of the sound.
The bowls sit on primitive wood forms, very dense, and substantial.
2nd element.
The bowl constructions sit within a circuit which traverses the gallery space, dividing it into 6 areas. This circuit is composed of transparent vinyl encasements which extend along the floor, from glass vials mounted on the wall. This structure will be used to create forms of mineral from bone, which is “constructed” through an electrochemical process. Two solutions with opposing pH factors are placed in the vials, and electrodes are placed in the solution. A firm gel is placed between the 2 solutions. Over time, forms of hydroxyapitite appear, as the two opposing solutions interface within the gel.
For the installation, only the scaffolding of this process will be presented. That is, only the vials, the electrodes, and the tubing containing the bone formations. They will have been grown in the studio, over an 8 week period. They would appear as substantial bone traces, moving towards each other. This is the opposite of the erosion, occurring in the bowls. Along the length of the tubing there will be occasional sac-like nodules, which contain larger bone formations. In the drawings, these are indicated as bubbles intersecting the tubing.
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