Westphal Thomas

My heart is a smoking hole in the ground

2011-11-15T21:37:00.003+02:00

2011
HD Video
16:9
Duration 06.00 min

A sole survivor of a heavy party night has passed out facedown on a sofa. Is he happy, lovesick, broke or drifting? One can only speculate about the figure that forms a classical wasted centerpiece in this video. The rotating reflections of an invisible disco balls and music beats wash over the scenery.

Vertical Limit, video

2011-07-20T01:57:00.004+03:00

Vertical Limit
2011
16:9
HD
00:01:32
stereo sound

The video shows a haptic exploration of a 16-meter high tree. The protagonist in this video is a hand that travels up the bark starting from the firm solid trunk at eye level and ending at the highest most elastic of its branches. The hand is in this case not Symbol of how to manipulate the physical world, but also how to perceive it.
I took the video in one shoot and its flawless motion creates a feeling of lucidity and weightlessness. For a moment one can become a gravity defying squirrel or an ant not worrying about dimensions or just liquid absorbed by the roots and traveling through fine capillary systems towards the leaf-bearing branches.
You can see the video by following this link http://vimeo.com/user3810697

Vertical Limit, Installation

2011-02-09T23:01:00.007+02:00

“Vertical Limit”, video/kinetic installation
2011
Hardware: computer controlled industrial motor, arduino microcontroller, hdmi box, switches, nylon wire, steel wire, silicon wire, beamer, and steel, funier, concrete.
Video components: Two HD video files being displayed according to the up and down movements- each track has duration of 05.10 min (original “one shot” footage).

The video/kinetic installation “Vertical Limit”, takes the same named video work to the next level. I always wanted to create a symbiosis between moving image and kinetic movement. The footage of the former mentioned work was used in combination with a kinetic set up. A lofty space at the summer exhibition “Tilallisia paikkoja/Spatial places” in Fiskars 2011 was the perfect setting to mount this experiment. The height of the space offered the opportunity to play with the vertical dimension. In the height of eight meter I installed a devise that could lower and rise a triangular “beamer pod”, thereby constantly traveling up and down between to likewise forms
On the floor, centered and 250/300 cm into the space is a triangular concrete block from witch three steel wires went up to the ceiling. These wires are guide lines on witch the video projection devise went up and down by means of an microchip controlled industrial motor. The projector rises and sinks in five min. intervals and according to this rhythm the movement in the video is synchronized. To antennas on the top and bottom give signals to the motor as well as to the Hdmi box when to switch to the right video file.
The installation worked flawless for about a month but had to be shoot down because of a hardware error (cable tranmission). Nevertheless it will be debugged for the next show and I am quite confident it will improve with this changes. The work can be customized for any room and location that provides a ceiling height of at least 450 cm.

Hand on wire

2011-02-09T02:15:00.004+02:00

Hand on wire
2011
HD video
00.06.45 min

“Hand on wire” is one of several experimental video works that originated in the idea of human reclamation of space, in this case the vertical. My chosen settings- may they be human build architecture (suspended electricity lines between buildings),- or natural given locations (lofty treetops) are places that radiate a lucid atmosphere. For these projects I used a powerful hydraulic lifter that can carry two people up to a height of 22 m and can perform coordinated movements (vertical/horizontal) simultaneously.
The video was taken at Oksasenkatu in Töölö and unfolds its activity in form of a hand performing a high wire act on a electricity line that is suspended at 12 m height between two red brick 7 floor buildings.

High Plateau

2011-02-06T20:00:00.004+02:00

High Plateau
2011
HD video (looped)
00.01.50 min

The work “High Plateau” was filmed during my residence at the Cite´ Internationale des Arts in Paris. I took a lot of video footage of street performers and practitioners of parcour that reclaim the urban environment for their own pleasure.
Set against skyline of Paris a floral street pole stands like an exclamation mark against the clouded horizon. A small group of pigeons gets a surprising visit by a soccer acrobat that has his own personal claim to this vertical playground.

Body Flight

2010-12-06T20:39:00.002+02:00

Body Flight
2010
Plastic protectors from various sport uniforms, aluminum, Plexiglas, ventilator, plywood, light bulbs
Because of the low ceiling height I decided to have one of the sculptures hovering over a giant air van like in Indoor skydiving, a popular training tool for skydivers. Vertical wind tunnels enable human beings to fly in air without planes or parachutes, through the force of wind being generated vertically. Wind moves upwards at approximately 195 km/h (120 mph or 55 m/s), the terminal velocity of a falling human body belly-downwards.
The round corpus is made of plywood covered with a semitransparent Plexiglas plate.
One can see the shadows of a rotating propeller that is caste by a strong light source underneath.
The Van component has a diameter of 2600 cm and had to be 60 cm high to fit the mechanical and electronically elements. The Airflow was simulated by the rotating shadows of the wing blades. The sculpture was hanging apex. 200 cm above the surface by steel wires. The work was shown at the Sara Hilden Art Museum in Tampere.

Body Shop

2010-12-06T20:29:00.002+02:00

Body Shop
2010
Plastic protectors from various sport uniforms, aluminum, concrete
Hanging 4 channel video display with 23”W TFT Color LCD screens in cone shaped steel display (120x120x60 cm pointed slightly angled towards all 4 directions)
The displays shows video footage of black and white painted body parts filmed in a black box. The face, hands and feats perform simple movements during a looped interval of several minutes. The strong contrast of black and white reminds of robotic 3Ddesign.
Underneath the hanging display is the dressing area. It is a ring of aluminum that is supported by aluminum posts with concrete feet. Hanging from this ring is a selection of equipment garment -like clothes- waiting to be tried on. There are models of arms, legs as well as upper and downer torsos on display.

Centre of Mass

2010-12-06T20:24:00.002+02:00

Center Of Mass
2010
Kinetic sculpture on stand
SP motor, steel, wires, hard shell plastic protective elements
Figure 220x 90x40 cm, Stand from metal with motor 90x90x30 cm

The work “Center Of Mass”, is a slightly bigger than human size sculpture that collapses and erects its form in a 1 min interval. A hidden motor inside the stand pulls a steel cable that is connected to several joints of the figure and folds its limbs together. Steel springs restore the figure to its normal standing posture when the motor reverses its setting.
The figures outlines consist of black plastic protective shells. (Various forms of sports)
The ancient Greek physicist, mathematician, and engineer Archimedes of Syracuse first introduced the concept of center of mass. The center of mass of a body does not generally coincide with its geometric center, and this property can be exploited. When high jumpers perform a "Fosbury Flop", they bend their body in such a way that it is possible for the jumper to clear the bar while his or her center of mass does not. The work is an experiment whereby I try to simulate human movements with simple mechanical elements.

Dionysia

2010-05-15T22:09:00.006+03:00

Dionysia
2010
Installation with sculptural and video elements
-Field, Wall 400x450x50 cm, Field 400x500cm,
Silicon molded and hand painted plaster replicas of 25 basketballs,
taped field, iron b.ball rig,
-Hanging 4 channel video display with 23”W TFT Color LCD screens in cone shaped steel display (120x120x60 cm pointed slightly angled towards all 4 directions), HD players
I like to use the term “unfolding” when I talk about my artistic practice because it refers to the process in witch a concept or a form becomes visible in most of its visual and conceptual elements. The installation Dionysia developed out of the same working method. I wanted to unfold a whole basketball match into sculptural elements. The different aspects of the ceremony were dismantled and formed a new spatial set up that disrupted the foreseeable patterns of the game. I was using video displays, sculptural elements, tapings and objects in the realization.
The work title “Dionysia” derives from an ancient religious festival in honor of the god Dionysus, the central event of which was the performance of tragedies and comedies.
The work certainly inhabits both aspects of performance in the sense of the hilarious destruction of rather beautiful sculptures. It also commends on the western conception of time, which is highly dramatic in the Greek sense of movement (dramatic movement).
There is a point of origin; there is progress, linear or even exponential, there is crisis and finally catharsis or fall. Creation and destruction as we observe in the playful learning process of children stays a dormant aspect of human character. A lot of temporary problems are coursed by an excuse to unleash the negative side in the name of competition. Heaven or hell-win or fail. I liked the way that this existed as complete picture after the big event was over. The hanging display shows a 3 min. loop of a basketball game. The balls having been used were authentic looking hollow balls of painted plaster that crashed during a game in which five players performed. Four HD cameras have recorded the happening from different angels.

Thermoposteriophobia

2010-05-15T21:37:00.004+03:00

Thermoposteriophobia
2010
concrete, thermostat, heating cable

The name “Thermoposteriophobia” describes an overpowering phobia of second hand body warmth. I found an Internet forum were people discussed this more or less common disease. A woman was writing about her problems riding the public transportation and sitting on warm seats after other people she doesn't know. Given a few moments to cool, she will sit right down with no problem, but she will feel the seat before sitting to make sure. In public spaces and Transport systems we constantly exchange involuntarily warmth and also coldness in some cases.

This outside work was realized for the exhibition Intertwining witch dealt with interactive installation. A concrete slap outside the main entrance to the Art academy was my chosen location. During summertime this place is a popular hangout where people drink coffee or smoke but in the finish winter it disappears under snow.
I casted a concrete plate (5cm thickness) with a hidden heating module. The plate has the exact measurements of the concrete block and was placed neatly on top of the former. The heating system is similar to the floor heating devises and maintains an average temperature of 37.0° Celsius.
In dry condition it is an unexpected surprise for a person sitting down on this spot.
During rain or snowfall it leaves a visible mark suggesting a person having left its warmth at this place.

Uncanny valley Version 2

2010-05-15T21:30:00.002+03:00

Uncanny valley -Version II
2010
Video-kinetic/installation, steel, Arduino Duemilanove microchip, servo motors, steel pipes, springs, five micro video projectors, concrete

The installation uses simple kinetic elements and video footage of painted body parts, filmed in a black box. A kinetic torso moved by servomotors is fixed to the wall and performs simple body gestures like shrugging its shoulders or gentle swaying in the hip area. Together with this moving frame I arranged five looping videos coming from separate beamers. These complete the figures expression with face, hands and feats.
The strong contrast of black and white reminds of robotic 3Ddesign and creates an alienating feeling.

Uncanny Valley

2009-11-15T14:01:00.015+02:00

Uncanny Valley
2009
Arduino Decimila microchips, twelve servo motors, aluminum construction, springs, skin (collagen)

This work was realized for the group exhibition 7 Cubes that was curated by the Berlin based, Dutch artist Anneke Eussen. It is my first kinetic sculpture with Arduino technology. As a primary set up for the exhibition the gallery space was divided into by an elastic grid of 1-sqm cubes. This web created a determined space to work with.
For the given proposal I wanted to make a sculpture that moves in and outside the cube by expanding and contracting it limbs. An Idea about how movement is equal to “ever-changing” space, programmed and yet unpredictable.
I wanted to create this prototype of the robot as skinny and filigree as possible in the sense of a spatial drawing. Later on I decided to still at some parts of bodily volume of collagen tissue.
The Title “Uncanny valley” arrived from the hypothesis that goes by this name and holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The "valley" in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot's lifelikeness.
It was introduced by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori
Mori's hypothesis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.
This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely human" and "fully human" entity is called the uncanny valley. The name captures the idea that a robot, which is “almost human”, will seem overly "strange" to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the empathic response required for productive human-robot interaction.

Traceur

2009-09-29T21:24:00.011+03:00

The installation Traceur ( French verb tracer,” to trace") consists out of several figures that are participating in non-competitive activities. The sculptures are made of hard-shell plastic amour plates that derive from protective gear that has been assembled from sport equipment. The exhibition space will be inhabited by these creatures that are free-climbing, base-jumping and follow deeply concentrated a bizarre game shown on a monitor.
The title derives from the Parkour movement in witch a participant is trying to move as smoothly, efficiently and quickly as possible in urban surroundings. It takes an explicit stand against sport competition and rivalry and because of its notorious unorganized nature, the absence of well-defined practice grounds and official rules, the activity is often mislabeled as extreme or Life style pursuits. These slowly emerging subcultures have been fascinating Westphal because they seem to rebel against the established norms. Competitive sport manifests by rating nations, teams and individuals carrying in its basic core the Western cultural thinking. It lets us be blind concerning the fact that there are worldwide many cultures that show a different approach to these topics for example a stronger link between the physical and mental/spiritual training.

Psychose blanche

2009-02-25T01:31:00.000+02:00

Psychose blanche
2009
Mixed media /sculpture
Fiberglass (Surf-Tec), white powder, wood, plexi glass

The work “Psychose blanche”(White psychosis) was especially made for the exhibition with the theme “Miami” in the Hudson Museum in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The show was curated by the Dutch artist Jeroen Kuster as being a new group exhibition of Tupajumi (international artist network), an initiatives of cross border working artists that organize exhibitions for each other in their various home countries.
The name “Miami” immediately went along with the association created by the TV series “Miami Vice” that was first broadcasted in Germany in 1986 and was a blockbuster for every 14 year old (like me at that time). The term vice is phonetically almost like the German word weiß (white) or Ich weiß (I know) and innocently I always assumed it to mean either one of them.
It certainly triggered an association with Cocaine that was often the issue in the plot and after the movies like Scarface or Blow and Cocaine Cowboys everybody knew that in the 80th the city of Miami was in drug frenzy. Columbian coke was pumped into the city and clashed with ex ile cubans syndicates, leading to Cocaine wars of 1980 and gave Miami the image of the most lucrative and deadly place in the world. Many sources claim that the foundation of this glamorous city as we perceive it today has been built on clean washed- drug related money from the old days. Throughout the last years there has been spectacular drug busts involving American airplanes, loaded with up to 5.5 tons of cocaine. (To read about, check out the US-Journalists Garry Webb Rip and Daniel Hopsicker)
The concept behind this work was a combination of the former mentioned topics and the” tag”applied to it, -“Psychose blanche”.
In the beginning I was tempted to work with the wings of the most notorious drug trafficking airplanes in use, especially the DC-9`s, lately often mentioned in the news. Later on I went for a sort of combination of wingtip of a crashed airplane/ shark dorsal fin that I am very satisfied with. Like the wing gliding through air is the visible element of an aircraft, it mirrors the fin of a sea dwelling counterfeits that emerges shortly to display its prominent and most recognized part to the outer world.
In a way it let me escape from all the conspiracy-political sites into a realm where I could think more freely about associated terms like whiteness-emtiness. The term “Psychose blanche” (French)- The white psychosis, as term originates from the field of psychiatric studies. It is used to describe a situation in witch an individual (often caused by excessive cocaine abuse), faces an overpowering confrontation with its absolute inner vacuum. (The fear of emptiness- Horror vacui).
Talking about the void it turns out that there is a great amount of writing on this Topic. J.P.Satre unfolds the human existence on the blanket of the void. Christian and Islamic Theologies teach us about the creation out of nothingness. (Creatio ex nihilo)
In the written philosophy of painting we find a great amount of artist that dealt with the fear of blankness, or white surfaces. Ehrenzweig (Kleiniase School of Psychoanalysis) himself created the rather cool term o f” low level vision of unconsciousness scanning” He defines this term by a process in which a painter seems to be starring into nothingness. This emptiness enables him to generate visual images, a powerful tool because it enables him unconsciously to gather visual and associative knowledge by scanning an empty surface. Empty ness can be found in a Buddhist monk that concentrates himself onto calligraphy. He tries to shot himself off against the agile intensity of thought to make the right brushstroke. Emptiness is a void in witch writers loose their course. Emptiness that creates new meaning. Herman Hesse said that “The will to think has to be enabled, abstact art as a modern form of mystic, as a sacral experience ha to be rooted in the feeling of emptiness.” Fuller describes whiteness as blankness and suggests that we can experience whiteness either as abyss in which we get sucked in and loose ourselves, but also as Blanc surface on which new. Ideas and forms generate from.

Patrocolos

2009-02-25T01:24:00.001+02:00

2008
Patrokolos
Plastic protectors from various sport uniforms, aluminum, LCD screen
& Combination with the media work Contest of epilogues
Programming based 3D animation, 9 min loop

Competitiveness is always bound up with death- in a sense it deals with what happens after death. In the Iliad- the first sporting contest to be described --we can find this element most prominently.
Within the unraveling tale the protagonist Achilles honors his brother in arms Patrokolos, that
had been killed in the battles of the Trojan War. Achilles organizes the games in memory of his friend and accordantly to this everything is measured in terms of the deceased. Achilles hands out prizes and gifts honoring Patrokoles and in fact organized the whole event in order to force everyone for a time to use Patrokoles itself as system for measurement of its own inconsolableness.

The sculpture Patroklos now sits silent and contemplating-staring at the video screen, and while the reason of his lifelong performance came to a screeching hold, his activity still continues behind reason. Deprived by life he can now start to play for real, with no further need of awards, he has no need of anything except for the dark defining lines that coordinate his epilogue.
In the projected 3D animation the dead players are animated to endlessly run on field without purpose. The characteristics of a game have vanished. There are no rules, no ball, not even a team, just a tireless activity of performance.

The programming based animation has been created in collaboration with the finish media artist Ilpo Jäskilainen.

Contest of epilogues

2009-02-25T01:11:00.000+02:00

Contest of epilogues
2007
Programming based computer animation
9 min, looped DVD- or in infinite variation mode in connection a computing system

I am a great admirer of the writings of the Russian artists Yuri Leyderman, which himself tends to
regard sport as a spiritual field of human activity and has been writing a lot concerning this subject. I was inspired by his writings regarding the creation and concept behind this animation.
The following quote is a extract from Leydermans text “Dead teams”, which was published in the collection Imena elektrokov (Names of the electrons, 1997) -“Football teams die in airplane disaster”, writes Leyderman. “-Its common to say of all sudden death that it is senseless; but can you really call senseless the death of an entire football team? Is there not here a hint of some gleaming victory, an aftertaste of an exact hitting of a mark, the click made by a possibility slamming shut…?”
(Add. Info-Airplane Crash- English Manchester United in 1940, Russian Pakhtakor-Tashkent in 1978, African Zambia national Team in 1993) White -yellow –black. Ironic?
In the projected 3D animation the deceased team is resurrected to endlessly run on field without purpose. The characteristics of a game have vanished. There are no rules, no ball, not even a team, just a tireless activity of performance.
The animation “ Contest of epilogues”-was produced for the Exhibition Performance principle at Muu Gallery in 2007. The work was realized in co-operation with the Finnish Media artist Ilpo Jääskelainen that helped me with creating the 3D modeling and the necessary programming work. The animated players are modeled in relation to a series of sculptures.
“Contest of epilogues”, was never mend to be shown on its own but always combined with a sculptural component. Within this exhibition it was shown in combination with the installation “Performance principle”- a group of eight sculptures made of hard-shell protection parts and nowadays in the work “Patrocoles”, a sculpture in which the work was integrated to be displayed on a LCD screen.

Performance principle

2009-02-25T00:57:00.000+02:00

Performance principle
2007
Eight figures in combination with projected 3D animation
Hard plastic protection elements from various sport equipment, vetonit base, wood construction

Competitive sport in general and international competitive sport in particular carries a message through its very structure. It manifests in rating nations, teams and individuals, and states at its basic core the Western cultural thinking of being -a competitive society. Not only have modern athletes compete against each other but they also have measure their achievements against records set by already deceased colleges. Their achievements are eternally fixed within our mainframe of time and space.
Western culture acts to firmly entrenched pattern and believes that manifests them self unconsciously and are rarely challenged. There seems to be an (cultural) overriding commitment towards the performance principle. Apply the rules, let the rules define the process; let the process go on without limits.
In this particular work I was dealing with the afterlife of athletes, individuals that lived their live striving for acceleration, broke borders with will power or drugs and are unlike to stop, even by death.
The installation Performance principle displays a combination of sculptures and computer animated video projection. The sculptural part consists of nine individual crafted players. Sexless, bulky and scary, their bodies are mere exoskeletons, abandoned shells by their previous owners.The amour plates that circumscribe their bodies are compiled of hard shell protection parts collected from sport equipment.

Banana republis Inc.

2009-02-25T00:48:00.000+02:00

Banana Republic Inc
2008
Performance/Installation
60 Basketballs various condition, singer sewing machine, stuff

Banana Republic Inc is a pejorative term for a small, often Latin American, Caribbean or African country that is politically unstable, dependent on limited agriculture, often ruled by a small, self- elected, wealthy and corrupt clique. In most cases one finds a government structure with a small leisure class on the top and a large, poorly educated and poorly paid working class of peons. Throughout the last years there has been a growing concern about child laborers and adult workers who are exploited in the sporting goods industry. Due to the low wage level in conventional trade, families are forced to make their children add to the family income and work in order to make ends meet. Sub-contractors in sweatshop fashion produce for nearly all the world-famous trademarked sport article brands. For that reason Banana republics are typically also highly prone to revolutions and coups.
Banana Republic Inc. is a counter-revolution/evolutionary performance act in witch the industrial product is pulled back to its rural roots. During a three-day production in the exhibition space I was cutting and sewing a large amount of traditional eight-panel basketballs into banana shapes.

Entelechia

2009-02-25T00:32:00.000+02:00

Entelechia
-(from Greek en in, telos purpose and echein to have)
2007
Current scale is 700 x 300 cm
A selection of spherical-ball-shaped designs in down spiraling complexity,
collagen, and needles, Plexiglas bubbles, drawing of a digestive system

The used polygons shapes are the following (simple to complex)
Triangle (trigon), quadrilateral (tetragon), pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, nonagon (enneagon), decagon, hendecagon (undecagon), dodecagon, tridecagon (triskaidecagon), tetradecagon (tetrakaidecagon), pentadecagon (pentakaidecagon), hexadecagon (hexakaidecagon), heptadecagon (heptakaidecagon), octadecagon (octakaidecagon), enneadecagon (enneakaidecagon) icosagon, triacontagon, tetracontagon, pentacontagon, hexacontagon, heptacontagon, octacontagon, enneacontagon, hectogon

When considering origin of life we usually take the evolutionary viewpoint starting from the simple and its qualitative changes toward the complex. In the installation “Entelechia” it happens reversed inside a gigantic digesting organ that swallows the complex and ejects the simple. The Installation "Entelechia" depicts a picture of a gut system that is painted straight at the gallery wall.
The term “Entelechia”, originates in the writings of Aristotle about his understanding of life and
the force of life as laid down in one of his later treatises “De Anima”.
“What we call life is feeding, growing and atrophying in a self-containing process”, Feeding, in other words, is the basic feature of life. It takes part in a dual movement: Outwardly towards a possible source of food and inwardly back to the organ itself.”
Yet this takes place in a self-containing process and these processes are in it self the living thing”.
Now this classification of life can be applied to its simplest life forms like bugs, seeds, microorganisms and of cause us as humans on a basic level, as we are as Aristotle puts it-an organ within a self-sustaining system.
“When something appears in the full splendor of its very essence and shows what it is and what it is capable of being purely through itself (eidos), it enters a state of fulfillment and contentment in which it assumes a concrete form.” Maintaining this state is what Aristotle calls “entelechy”. Entelechy may further denote a force propelling one to self-fulfillment. There is an internal drive within the organ of atrophying and intensifying that reflects the performance principle.
Within the parkour trough the digestive system- the various shapes of geometric cutting forms go on a tireless journey. The very complex-meaning freshly swallowed, higher complex species are cradled in the stomage but will soon proceed towards simpler versions of the same specimens. These shapes furthermore continuo their journey through the labyrinths of the gut system that- finally being done- will displaying the simplest triangular pyramidal shape that will periodical ejected by the disposal port (anus).
The material you can see encased in the acrylic bubbles is called collagen, an animal based tissue layer underneath the skin. This material I was able to “purchase” during a summer job in a pharmaceutical industry several years ago and I am still experimenting with it.
Collagen has the consistence of handmade paper, but when moisturized becomes flexible like thin sliced bacon. Pinned with needles to a computer generated cutting mask it transforms- during a several day long drying process between calculated fixation points.
By behaving this way it breaks the stiff geometrics and stretches into gentle curves, though forming a living geometry.
My work process started with creating computer generated three-dimensional models of the used polygons. Think about them as wire frame objects (not solid but made like out of glass, and being translucent) -so that one could see its whole symmetry. The advantage is that I can radiate this models around itself into a position that is visual interesting and less symmetrical.
Now a soccer ball surface has clear visual symmetry from our point of vision, but it also extends itself to a not perceivable backside. By proceeding in the earlier mentioned way (making them transparent) I had them both (front and back) clear visible and was separating each on of them in two-dimensional layers.The two layers with its radius and junction points were further transferred to paper on witch the collagen was fixed with needled and left to dry. After the drying process these two layers were combined by witch the “backside” was lifted 1cm, and the front side 3 cm of from the paper.This creates the effect of the work as being a spatial object.
The installation “Entelechia” used to go under name “Eat this”; -that had been a work name-tag.
As artist I feel free to change names at points that a new idea finally settles and if you read about this piece on other pages, don’t get confused about it. Insights often occur, by the fact that my works are often more than an individual sculptures but generate within bigger installations. There are temporary several works that I consider to be ongoing project by means of being unfinished or ongoing collections. “Entelechia” is a work in process, meaning that it is adjustable and extendable.
Likewise the installation-collection by the name “Skinned polygons”, “Eat this!" is visualizing an evolutionary process revolving around a round shape. (I like the way it sounds.)
It is not my aim to claim deeper meaning to my works by connecting them to specific concepts of ancient Greek philosophers- but in a way I often find their sort of reasoning fitting to a certain school of thought that I enjoy from a sculptural point of view.
Please feel free to skip this train of thoughts and just go for the visual -or being interested in this topics-to read the first chapter of the second book of Aristotle’s -De Anima.

Blue pill-red pill

2009-02-25T00:24:00.000+02:00

Blue Pill-red pill
2007
Vitrine 60x70x130cm
Mixed media
Pill shaped objects, hand sewed out of multiple blue and red soccer balls (logos removed), display with a movie dialogue quotation.

The name and its allegory “ Blue pill-red pill”, goes along with an text quotation, that I borrowed from “The Matrix”- an science fiction movie produced 1999, written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski.
The movie describes a future in which reality-as perceived by humans-is actually a simulated reality. The story’s protagonist that senses this illusion is on its search for truth and meets like-minded characters. One of them is the mysterious Morpheus which offers him the choice to swallow either a blue or a red pill in order of his persuade- the blue one to forget everything about his quest and the red one in order to proceed his search towards knowledge.

“You take the blue pill
the story ends, you wake up
in your bed and believe
whatever you want to believe.

You take the red pill
you stay in Wonderland
and l show you how deep
the rabbit hole goes.”

The allegory is also found in Charles Lutwidge Dodgson´s novel “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” (1865) and the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar and anthropomorphic creatures and in order to survive has to eat and drink multiple body and consciousness altering substances.

Dawn of man- a new approach

2009-02-25T00:13:00.000+02:00

Dawn of Man- a new approach!
2006
DVD 9:30 min

In the fictitious documentary “Dawn of Man- a New Approach” I am staging the first discovery of the ball by an apelike human around 2 million years ago. The movie has been collaboration with the finish media artist Sari Palosaari that has guided me in the camera work and editing assistance trough this project. It is myself in the costume by the way! It was designed by my brother Uli Westphal that is working as visual artist in Berlin.
Balls are cultural artifacts that reach far back in time and were at hand when man started to play. In my documentary we become witnesses of the moment when the enlightened Homo habilis becomes the Homo ludens, the “Playing human”.
The movie has been largely inspired by the beginning sequences of Stanley Kubricks, 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Kubrick´s version we are apelike beings, living in hostile environment constantly in fear of darkness, starvation and predators. We witness the man-apes igniting spark toward humanity as our ancestor learns to use a skeleton bone as weapon. It always made me feel uncomfortable that the rise of humanity began with a weapon. In my movie wanted to make a new approach to this story. What if the first real human discovery was a ball, first of snow and later in a modified form made of tree branches? Out of curiosity and playful research our ancestor made an innovation that has never left him since-, and throughout time has been passed to us.

Ikarus syndrom

2009-02-25T00:02:00.000+02:00

Ikarus Syndrome
Drawing, Ink on paper
300x140 cm
Since birds are highly visible and common animals, humans have had a relationship with them since the dawn of man. Birds have been featured in culture and art since prehistoric times, when they were represented in early cave paintings. The most known figure that comes to ones mind must be Ikarus, the Hero from Greece mythology that flying to high on borrowed wings, crashed and burned.
In 2006 I had an exhibition in Lahti´s Hiihtomuseum, Finland that was situated at the giant downhill ski jumping tracks I found it more than fitting to make a work about this human ambition. Flying is probably mankind’s greatest dream-it is a deep-rooted topic in ancient literature and still fascinates us today. Sigmund Freud described dreams about flying as a natural progression as we grow. First we crawl, then start to walk continue to run -and from a child point of view- it would be natural to expect to fly next. The drawing “Ikarus Syndrome” is a visual study of what is birdlike in man and what is manlike in birds.
The drawing displays a wide variety of comparing studies such as simple human shelters and bird nest architecture, bird skeleton heads and sport helmets, flight formation and synchronized sport disciplines, bird postures and jumping styles, our diverse anatomy and physiology, fossils and iconographical imaginary.
The several hundred ink drawings are partly strong structured but merge towards the middle into a melting pot of transfigurative chaos in which each species intermingles with each other.

Out of Pakistan

2009-02-24T23:54:00.002+02:00

Out of Pakistan
2004- ongoing
Current state, tent 280x150x150 cm - tarpaulin 280 x 300 cm
38 Illustrations, 4 frames, 50cm x 70 cm each

Pakistan is producing 80% of sport balls sold in the world. Almost 75% of these are made in the city of Sialkot that services for more than 200 producers People flock to this city from far away to find work and produce the items that are marketed as "lifestyle" products.
The balls that are all hand made are manufactured in close to 2000 workshops. In the cities sheds and backyards are rafley 40000 men and women stitching away, each subcontracting to a Pakistani company.
Most modern footballs are stitched from 32 panels of waterproofed leather or plastic- 12 regular pentagons and 20 regular hexagons. The panels are Hand stitched; with pre punched stitching holes (combined with a latex bladder)- in this way 32 Panels are held by 720 stitches that a soccer ball need to be accomplished. A skilled worker needs three hours and 750 stitches to piece together the 32 separate panels with waxed thread with a maximum of three balls a day to deliver to the downtown manufacturer. His or her reward will be the equivalent of 1,80€ a day. Their handiwork will sell as quality product under a brand name that costs close to a 100€ in European stores.To make ends meet many families have been including their children into the manufacturing process.
In 1996 however, during the European championship, activists lobbied to end the use of child labor. This eventually led to the Atlanta Agreement, which seeks to reform the industry to eliminate the use of child labor in the production of balls. The outcome however is still controversial because the former integrated minors are now send to work in more dangerous working environments and the production lines are focused on factory facilitations often difficult to reach by the locals that have to travel every day and are disconnected with their social bounds. Throughout the last two years it got a lot worse, if you go today in a sport shop you will find that the trend clearly goes to glued soccer balls that are made in several East Asian countries.
Chinese competition is threatening from below, bombarding the market with cheap, mechanically stitched balls. The Thai producers are bearing down from above, whittling away at Khawaja's market share with their high-tech, glued product. His competitors have already scored a major victory. This year's World Cup stadiums will not be sporting hand-stitched Adidas balls from Sialkot. Glued balls from Thailand will be taking pride of place.
It takes strength to drive the needle through the thick plastic. I made the experience myself working on this project. For over five years I have been collecting old soccer balls, dismantling them, cutting out the pentagons and sewing the remaining pieces to become a tarpaulin. There is only a certain amount of pieces one can sew before ones fingertips say- that’s it. The collected items have all been played and wear the marks of heavy usage.
This project has been my long lasting ambition to create a sculpture that can serve as a refuge shelter entirely made of soccer balls. 2009 it will finally reach a surface size that will make it recognizable as a tent like shelter, a survival tent entirely manufactured by soccer balls.
I also used the inflatable bladders (usually made of either latex) to make a comfortable air mattress that guaranties a soft and cozy sleeping surface.
During this project I have also teamed up with the German artist/ illustrator Martin Markes that created accompanying illustrations to this project.
Our junction point originated in a newspaper article based on a story wherein German custom officials discovered two Pakistani minors in a cargo container full of sporting equipment at the international cargo airport in Frankfurt. Like media sources claimed, the two boys that have been employed, as ball stichers in the city of Sialkot were eager to travel to a country were the best soccer is played.
My sculptural work goes along with the 38 illustrations of M.Markes that contain a visual diary of their adventures journey.Between the evergreen lawn of the stadiums and the dusty ball factories exists a space in whom dreams and reality mix.. Both works invite you on a fantastic journey to the land and the people of whom we know little and can only assume.

Please check out the article by Uwe Buse, Football and chains http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,418139,00.html

Fieldstudies

2009-02-24T23:41:00.000+02:00

Field studies
2004
98 Drawings and ground plans sport fields, board games and child play, ink drawing on paper
150x560cm, growing

Western relations to nature have been characterized by mastery rather than co-existents.
In the field of sport this mind set is especially dominant, manifesting in the fact that our playing fields are anti-nature and have to be- according to the fact that modern competitive sport has to facilitate a near laboratory setting in which its uni- dimensionality can unfold itself under controlled conditions. Pure nature has too much variation, too much noise, so it all has to become mapped, planned and graphical within the sense to keep locked out the immeasurable, unknown and unknowable.
Generally, playing fields are wide expanses of grass, dirt or sand without many obstructions.
A playground is used for playing sports or games; a playing field further refers to any place or context within which competitive activity takes place. It is also used as a metaphorical term in economics as the term “leveled field”, a plateau on which no external interference affects the ability of the players to compete according to a set of established and agreed rules.
In my works I often counter-target this conformity with individualism- a clash of special designed spaces for specific purpose- versus un-manipulated urban/ nature settings and the human urge to reclaim its right to imaginary play and to claim its private space.
Within this working process my idea was to create a collection in which the boarders of established systems in pro sports activities and child play blend into each other and lead the spectator to loose its grip in process of differentiation. Kids game chalk drawings found on streets and parking lots, board games as well as ground plans of sporting field’s stretch into a master plan of human activity. There is no hierarchy in the placing, every game every sport begins with a line that divides, allocates and grows with the complexity of the play.
The work Field studies consists play concepts that have been originated for more than 4000 years. The more than five meter long drawing displays 98 fields and disappears into a thorax like paper dispenser that offer more space for future finds.

Armory

2009-02-24T23:34:00.000+02:00

Armory
2006
Plastic hardshellprotectors from various sport uniforms, sandblasted glass walls, light tubes

The work was installed in the facilities of a former Jewish steam bath in the city of Wiesbaden. The spaces (bath, massage and showercabines) have been contributed and used for artistic installation work by the Fluxus Friends Wiesbaden e. V.
The selection of protective shells were arranged and fixed on backside illuminated glass walls.
An Armory is a depot used for the storage of protective equipment and offensive weapons.
I transformed the space by the motto, “Put your gun down brother”, the ritual of laying down your protective shells and engaging naked and unprotective the unique atmosphere of the spa.
Wiesbaden is one of the foundation places of the Fluxus Movement and the nice people that run the place keep up the founding spirit and spreading the founder’s movement with lots of enthusiasm and charisma.

Ballroom

2009-02-24T23:29:00.000+02:00

Ballroom
2007
Collection of balls (marbles to fist size ball specimens), steam bath with sandblasted Plexiglas membrane, light tubes, oversized glass test tubes with primal colored ball selection

In 2007 I had an exhibition in Wiesbaden in the Gallery of The Fluxus Freunde Wiesbaden e. V
in cooperation with the Finnish artists Sari Palosaari and Mia Rinne. The Exhibition was curated by artist group located in Frankfurt a M called 431 art and the show went under the name “Northbound-installations and media art from Finland”.
The exhibition spaces were located in a former Jewish bath and consisted of various shower and spa facilities that were provided to install spatial artworks. One of the cabins provided me with a stainless steel bath that I modified for the work “ Ballroom”.
Remembering the childhood pleasure of lying within a sea of balls I filled the bath with over thousand unique specimens of balls. These have been collected over the last five years and just were asking for to being presented in this particular way.
The work went together with the work “Pharma CV”, a color sorted selection of balls in oversized glass blown test tubes on the wall.

Dense matter

2009-02-24T23:19:00.000+02:00

Dense matter
2006
Light table, selection of balls

I was growing up influenced by my parents that had a strong interest in higher mathematics, physics, nature and art. During my childhood my inner world was always filled with terms originating these fields. The ball in its various forms and shapes forms for me a kind of nucleus around which visual memories revolves. The shape of a ball or sphere somewhat attracts associations to biological topics and narratives of the microcosm and its molecular world.
In one of my early childhood memories I remember myself lying in an IKEA ball sea and ruminating about abstracts ideas of molecules, dense matter and black holes. The title “Dense matter”, originates from physics, matter is anything that has both mass and volume (takes up space). Somehow it playfully popped in my head and stuck. During the last several years I have tried to collect as many unique ball specimens as possible, and have assembled over 1300 individual items. Why balls have been made?We like the smooth surface and the eye pleasing shape- coupled with an irresistible impulse of kicking it into the landscape or smashing it against the wall.
With a recorded history of at least 5000 years the ball is the earliest toy known to men. Along active games the most highly developed global played ones are played with balls and there is a great amount of them. The selected items on this table are inviting you to brainstorm and find a narrative element

Eternal Erection

2009-02-24T23:10:00.000+02:00

Eternal Erection
Rotating phallic sculpture sewed out of reflecting soccer-ball elements
2004
90-x18 cm, telescope stand
Ancient sculptures of Phallus symbols have been found in many parts of the world, notably among the vestiges of ancient Greece and Rome. Within many ancient cultures, phallic structures were symbolized with male fertility and the penises as well as the testicles were portrayed unrealistically huge and prominent. An erection is usually, though not exclusively, associated with sexual arousal, in many ancient cultures phallic structures centrally focus on adult male audience performances.
Sports like Soccer come often along with stereotypes of masculinity and Macho attitudes. It is considered and celebrated as a bulwark of men that we vigorously defend and in which context we celebrate our masculine gender role. In most parts of the world football evokes great passions and plays an important role in the life of individual fans, local communities, and even nations; it is therefore often claimed to be the most popular sport in the world and the only one that has its own worldwide understood idiosyncratic language. Millions undergo the strongest emotionally involvement during the games and the hype forces enormous pressure on the management, teams and individual players on high competitive level. The after mach of the world championship is often called “the big meat market”. A sell out of players that are both popular and skillful.
There are seventeen laws in the official Laws of the Game that were formulated by the International Football Association Board. Ironically this seems to match with the term “The ring of seventeen”, witch is a slang word for the steroidal substances and derives from its unique build up, -a ring of 17 molecules which functions as a magic key that through this unique build up can penetrate cell walls and fool around with the actual DNA. Even the schematic chemical drawing with its molecular structure of one five and three six edged polygons seems to resemble the classic soccer ball design.
Check out the image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steroid)
Testosterone is a steroid hormone from the androgen group. It is the principal
Male sex hormone and an anabolic steroid used for phallic enlargement and its performance improving abilities are considered to be a form of doping in most sports, particularly given the lengths to which athletes and professional laboratories go to in trying to conceal such abuse from sports regulators. The uses for anabolic steroids in sports and bodybuilding are controversial, because of their adverse effects and the potential to gain unfair advantage.
The work” Eternal Erection” is a 90cm high Phallus made by dismantling and assembling a bigger amount of silver reflective technique Soccer balls size 5.
The sewed Sculpture in its enlarged and firm state is fixed on a slow rotating motor placed on an “erectable” Tripod. A halogen beam creates a nice disco effect that illuminates the work and high lightens the form in all its splendor and glamour.

Mappa Mundi

2009-02-24T22:58:00.000+02:00

Mappa Mundi
2003- ongoing
Collection of unfolded balls from the field of sport, 12 Glass Frames, 140x160x8cm

Along active games the most highly developed global ones - are played with balls. When I slowly started to collect those items it became aware of the multiplicity of ways in witch they were formed and shaped.
It all started with a “Hacky Sack”, a fist-sized ball that was made out of triangular patches and had a label saying, “Made in Guatemala!” Cutting it open I found that it had a filling of black granulate that I later identified as being of volcanic origin. Something struck me than. I bought a ball made in the opposite side of the world, that was filled with a substance taking from the very heart of this country. It was a fascinating poetic thought and I was hooked.
I have to confess that it became an obsession and I have gathered more than a thousand individual items. Mappa Mundi is a collection of these balls that I collected on many years and journeys all over the world. The collection Mappa mundi was a starting point for a series of works that inhabit the idea of being ongoing collections. In the processes of collecting, ones own taste and vision, forms the individual core of a distinctively collection policy. While selecting I define unique objects belonging to a certain category and quality and therefore they are accepted into my private collection. Each one of the balls must have been played and has to have an individual construction pattern. Having fulfilled this terms the items are cut and unfolded along its sewing lines. Alienated in this way and presented in glass displays, they more likely seem to remind of ritual objects than belongings of the field of play and sports.
With their fillings of volcanic granulate, rice, seed, bones, reindeer fur, sound mechanisms, liquid and handwritings, each ball seems to reveal a new secret. It helped me mapping some unknown territory- so also the name of the work is related to this. Mappa mundi means Map of the World.
In my working method I sympathize with a 17th century tradition of creating ones own “Wunderkammer”, a cabinet of wonder, or a wonder-room. In their historical definition these collections often contained a mix of fact and fiction, cabinets were filled with preserved animals, horns, tusks, skeletons, minerals, as well as other types of equally fascinating man-made objects: sculptures wondrously old, wondrously fine or wondrously small; clockwork automata; ethnographic specimens from exotic locations.
As a artist/ collector I am got a lot of inspiration from the publishing’s and writings by “The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge”, that was founded in 1660 and is known simply as the Royal Society. I understand this movement as a group of renaissance people that were collectors preserving the old and searching the new, traveling to foreign countries engaging with other cultures and were constantly generating knowledge through hands on experiments.
Mappa mundi- a ongoing collection in the sense of this world is a very inspiring but also difficult work to handle. Consisting of ten segments it is rather big and not suitable to be shown in many galleries spaces. Furthermore I would not consider about selling it in pieces because the single frames compliment each other and are a growing collection, unique in this sense.
It consists out of ten segments with three further in preparation. Nevertheless there has been an offspring of works originating from the main collection. The last one was a big size format 150x 300 cm that was put on display at the 3rd Beijing Art Biennale in Beijing 2008.

Enemy mine

2009-02-24T22:33:00.000+02:00

Enemy mine
2006- ongoing collection-not yet exhibited
Eye pleasing objects assembled and reassembled by material collected from sporting and play activities that resemble anti personal mine-like objects,
Colourfull and eye pleasing rotating 3 D animations from anti personal landmines to be exhibited on various small LCD screens

Land mines are controversial because they remain dangerous after the conflict in which they were deployed, killing and injuring civilians and rendering land impassable and unusable for decades. As of 2007, a total of 158 nations have agreed to a banning treaty.
Thirty-seven countries have not agreed to the ban, including China, Finland, India, Israel, Morocco, Pakistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and the United States. Finland remains the only country in the European Union (EU) that did not want sign, ratify or accede to the Mine Ban Treaty.
The President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) responded to the news of this delay with an editorial in a Finnish weekly magazine, appealing to the government to accept the conscience of humanity because, “When States anywhere in the world remain outside of this norm, they provide a justification for the continued use of anti-personnel mines everywhere.”The international community clears approximately 100,000 land mines each year. During the same period between 2 and 5 million new land mines are laid. Land-mine proliferation thus adds each year two or more decades to the1100 years that would already be necessary of having all these land mines to be cleared at the current state.
Land mines are in reality a weapon of mass destruction, in slow motion, because they indiscriminately kill or maim massive numbers of human beings over a long period of time. Some of the largest numbers lie in wait in Africa and Asia. Virtually all combatants use land mines. The countries most devastated by land-mines are probably Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia and Afghanistan that have an estimated 10-15 million mines in place, -dangerously are also the about 1 million mines along the Iraq-Kuwait border and around the Iraqi city of Basra. Which the US and its allies have laid.
Land mines cause enormous pain and suffering. It is clear that many of these have been randomly scattered in inhabited areas precisely to cause civilian casualties and terrorize the population. Adults caught in the blast of an anti-personnel mine often survive with treatment, though they usually lose a limb. Children are less likely to survive because their bodies are so vulnerable. There are basically two types of land mines: anti-tank and anti-personnel. The most dangerous to children are the anti-personnel mines that explode even under the gentle pressure of a child's hand or foot. These come in a bewildering array of shapes and colors that can seem an interesting discovery for a curious child. One of the most infamous is the 'butterfly' mine, designed to float to the ground from helicopters without exploding, but with a shape and color that also make it a deadly toy.

Greenaway dish

2009-02-24T22:21:00.000+02:00

Greenaway dish
2003
Bouquet of color selected balls in glass bowls

The works name refers to the British film director Peter Greenaway.
The objects are displayed in an almost clinical style namely as specimen’s that grow in Petri dishes, nevertheless the balls colonies seem to overflow in their fruity and fresh appearance. The arrangement made me think of the beautiful food and flower displays as being seen in Peter Greenaway’s movie, The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover.
The visual hallmark of Greenaway's cinema is the heavy influence of Renaissance painting, and Flemish painting in particular, notably in scenic composition and illumination and the concomitant contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death.

Pharma CV

2009-02-24T22:12:00.000+02:00

Pharma CV
2006
Glass blown oversized test tubes, selection of ball specimens sorted by colors

I often feel a natural distrust towards competitive sport, and particularly against competitive sport at the international level. This is not an argumentation against individual, or collective achievement, player and teams trying their best to win, but the problem is if the method of achievement is competition at whatever cost. Western thinking and conception of life is highly dramatic. Everything hangs on the competition. Heaven or hell, win or fail.
Passion is the thing that the artist shares with the athlete, it keeps us going and at the same time to enjoy our profession. Art and sport on their best are and should be primary motivated.
In my works this issues come often in disguise of happy colored and playful objects from the world of play and sports but they also point to a dark underlying current.
Curriculum stems from the Latin word for racecourse, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow and mature in becoming adults. Pharmacology
(From Greek, pharmakon,”drug”, and–logia.) is the study of drug action. The Pharma CV comes here in the color of a rainbow but the glass test tubes hint also to a hidden and more sinister aspect. One could not phrase a better example as a quotation from the article (The Convicts of the Road) by the French journalist Albert Londres.
Following the Tour de France in 1924 he recalled the following interview with the previous year's winner, Henri Pélissier, his brother Francis and a third rider, Maurice Ville -that all had pulled out after a row with the organizers. Henri explained the problem - whether or not he had the right to take off a jersey - and went on to talk of drugs.

"You have no idea what the Tour de France is," Henri said. "It's a Calvary. Worse than that, because the road to the Cross has only 14 stations and ours has 15.
We suffer from the start to the end. You want to know how we keep going?
Here..." He pulled a phial from his bag. "That's cocaine, for our eyes. This is chloroform, for our gums."
"This," Ville said, emptying his shoulder bag "is liniment to put warmth back into our knees."
"And pills. Do you want to see pills? Have a look, here are the pills." Each pulled out three boxes.
"At night, in our rooms, we can't sleep. We twitch and dance and jig about as though we were doing St Vitus's dance..." Henri spoke of being as white as shrouds once the dirt of the day had been washed off their bodies, then of being drained by diarrhea, before continuing:
"There's less flesh on our bodies than on a skeleton, Francis said,
“The truth is, that we keep going on dynamite!"

Trigger

2009-02-24T22:06:00.000+02:00

Trigger
Kinetic experiment
Bowling balls, metal cables
2004
Kinetic energy can be passed from one object to another. We experience this process during the game of billiards when the cue ball collides with another ball, passing its kinetic force on to it. Collisions in billiards are effectively elastic collisions, where kinetic energy is preserved.
Newton's cradle, named after Sir Isaac Newton, is a device that demonstrates conservation of momentum and energy. The most popular office toy was produced in the early 70th under the name “clackers”. Due to the high cost of steel ball bearings later on used, the Spanish company called Scientific Demonstrations Ltd used high-density plastic balls instead.
In my installation “Trigger” I used seven matching bowling balls suspended from metal wires fixed to the ceiling. The work has been shown on my travel exhibitions “Playontology”2004 in Köln and the “Ball of fame” show in Berlin 2006 and always managed to attract an eager crowd for experiment with it.
It was interesting to find that “The Geek Group in Kalamazoo, Michigan” created a similar work in 2006. It is on public display and is used for science and technology demonstrations. Even though I beat them in time, they managed an array of 20 bowling balls to work. Its worth to check them out under http://www.thegeekgroup.org
Newton’s cradle, the original table version has been the most popular of all office toys. Office toys have been getting popular since the 1990s. Many companies even encourage employees to bring toys to their office for reducing stress. Different types of office toys accompany different functions or purposes. For example, Playing "Puzzles" arouses creativity while playing "Toys that involve physical activity" can let the user's mind rest without falling asleep at work. Users of office toys are usually office workers or adults, but it is not unusual for children to play with, since many toys were designed for kids in the first place. Most office toys are placed on office desktop. The purpose of bringing toys or playthings to the office are providing amusement, boosting creativity and relieving stress.

Armor E

2009-02-24T21:49:00.000+02:00

ArmorE
2004
Hard-shell protection parts originating from various sport uniforms, sandblasted light tables, neon light pipes, stainless steel punctured walls

Burial sites are extremely satisfying for archeologists, as they provide a
“Closed context” site (the objects all relate to one specific moment in time), full cultural, religious, and scientific evidence. The Archeologist Howard Carter must have been one happy fellow as he in November 1922 discovered the tomb of the Egypt pharaoh Tutankhamun. Along wooden shrines and an amazing array of statues, furniture and jewelry the grave contained board games and playing balls. We may assume that the Archaeologist, opening a grave that has been sealed more than 3000 yeas ago and finding a ball, must felt in that moment an emotional mental connection to this ancient fellow human being. . It also has to be mentioned at this point that first of all Mr. Carter came to Egypt to work as a artist and illustrator that was copying inscriptions and paintings.
King or pawn, the ball and the player have always been the heart of the drama.
Presented on light tables the installation Armor E could be a bizarre find of an archaeological digging site
The works consists out of hard-shell protection parts taken from various sport uniforms. Especially sports like ice hockey or American football with hard physical contact developed unique uniforms that transform the game into a fantastic visual event.
The pieces were puzzled together- rearranged to form a male and female body.
Are they the ancient King and Queen of Sport rituals?

Collection

2009-02-24T21:42:00.000+02:00

Collection
2004
Hard-shell protection parts originating from various sport uniforms, visual sorted

Collecting is considered to be very personal and in the process of selecting we also reveal a lot of our self. Rules or method are usually formulated during active search, some type of limitation is a natural part of an individual's selection process. Most artist are also collectors and it is not only about the possession of certain items but its always hints towards a work in progress. I have several such collecting projects; usually it takes me years before some actual work originates out of these. It is also acquired knowledge in this activity that I find valuable, one gets to know the whole lifecycle starting from the producers, facilitators, users and the final steps of disposing or recycling methods. I work a lot with items originating from the field of sports and have often hinted towards finding sponsors in the industry that could shortcut the collecting process but somehow I like the feel of an authentic find. I dig the authenticity of a well worn out soccer ball or a merciless battered protector plate having survived years of heavy impact by collision of players or other objects.
So this work consists of authentic wear gutted out of helmet, shoulder pads, elbow pads, mouth guard, protective gloves, heavily padded shorts, a 'jock' athletic protector, shin pads, chest protector, neck guards, face masks and specialized equipment designed to protect the player in action.

Nursery

2009-02-24T21:35:00.000+02:00

Nursery
2001
Steel, Copper, glass, crystallized Nickel II sulfate

The Image of the Nursery stands as symbol for scientific research or control of nature.
I wanted to create a sculpture that embodied the idea of a slowly growing picture- a still life that placidly reveals the laws of life. It was meant to be a place for the senses. A room of light that is floating like water and at the same time would be frozen likes crystal.
The Nursery that I was building had a classic house shape even though in small scale-it represents the archetype of shelter in which we find peace and intimacy.
A gardening house is associated with plants but we can attribute the idea of grows to other matter. The Italian Philosopher Italo Calvino talks in his Book Six Memos for the next Millenium about the crystal as “a form of perfect beauty that we cannot tear our eyes away from, a mode of growth in time, of expenditure of the matter surrounding it.”
Crystals with their inherited ability to spontaneous self-organization are thought to be a bridge between the organic and inorganic world. The research that I did for my final work installation Microcosm gave me a head start on chemical generated crystals.
Nickel II sulfate was my date. It is a chemical substance that is solvable in water and forms crystals when the saturated solution vaporizes.
Inside the body of the gardening house a slow metamorphosis was happening. Throughout a period of several months, water dissolved chemical regenerated crystals on the buildings glass wall. I had been doing various experiments to study the size and growing time of these chemical crystals that were circum-growing the basic structure The process took place on 28 glass plates (110x90 cm) that formed the walls of the Nursery. The light green crystals were growing in the high of 3 mm and were supposed to be illuminated only by the natural outside light. An inside space of 200 x 200 x 250 cm allowed the visitor to move freely and have a closer look at the mineral bliss.

Cowboy manual

2009-02-24T21:28:00.000+02:00

Cowboy manual
1998
Folding technique of Marlboro Cigarette package, folded package, drawing

Marlboro is a brand of cigarette famous for its billboard advertisements and magazine ads of the Marlboro Man.
In the early 1960s Philip Morris invented "Marlboro Country" and distilled their manly imagery into the rugged cowboys known as the "Marlboro Men." The image involves a rugged cowboy that pleasures himself with a cigarette in front of a grand nature setting.
The ads were originally conceived as a way to popularize filtered cigarettes, which at the time were considered feminine. It transformed a feminine campaign, with the slogan 'Mild as May', into one that was masculine, in a matter of months.
Although there were many Marlboro Men, the cowboy proved to be the most popular. This led to the 'Marlboro Cowboy' and 'Marlboro Country' campaigns.By accident I discovered this hidden secret behind the package design of this product. Feel free to play with it.

Fishing for new geometry

2009-02-24T21:16:00.000+02:00

“Fishing for the new geometry”

2002
St. Petersburg, PLOT Environmental art symposium
200x200x200 cm
Wood construction (free floating raft), collected and unfolded Russian balls

With 58 other international and Russian artists I took part in this symposium/ art in public space exhibition in the suburban district of St. Petersburg. We were asked to display a work on a 2x2m drifting raft on a lake.
At this stage I was busy with my collection Mappa Mundi and constantly searching for new ball designs. It was using my time in Russia to gather new impressions and of cause balls.
Now one immediately recognizes a product manufactured from a foreign industrial nation.
Colors, design, surface luster and grip are very unique. Still 15 years ago a German screwdriver differentiates from an English or Japanese one, even for an ordinary observer. This of cause has been vanished since countries brain drain their know-how into foreign countries for short time market advantages and individuality gets lost within the process.
The Russian industry with their planned market economy, that tried to fulfill consumer wishes years ahead of time were generating a huge amount of products that were and still are unique and desirable collectors items. Planned economies are in contrast to unplanned economies, such as a market economy, where production, distribution, pricing, and investment decisions are made by the private owners of the factors of production based upon their own and their customers' interests rather than upon furthering some overarching macroeconomic plan.
In short- if you in spring bought a pair of shoes that you cherish for their comfort and design, you want be able to find them available in the summer sales. It’s the same with ball design cause the pressing markets push the new and eliminate the old. But Russia, well within the first day I found designs of ball shapes that I have never seen before and never seen since. Therefore I called this work “ Fishing for new geometry”.
I unfolded the shapes and displayed them in form of a “fish Market” selling display on my 2x2qm raft. The work anyhow only lasted for a day, during the opening people were swimming out there and pick items to wear as heads, the next morning even the raft was gone. Nice people though, didn’t mind it.

Skinned polygones

2009-02-24T20:49:00.000+02:00

Skinned Polygons
2001-2004
60x70x6cm
Collection of unfolded bodies, Twelve out of eighteen pieces
Paper, Steel needles, Collagen, Ink, Graphite drawing on Aquarelle paper

Originally my interest in spherical geometry came from Cartography, the study and practice of making representations of the Globe on a flat surface. Quite soon I was fascinated by spherical geometry that deals with polygons (especially triangles) on the sphere and explains how to find relations between the involved angles. This is of great importance for calculations in astronomy and earth-surface and orbital/space navigation.
The most familiar spherical polyhedron is the football (soccer ball), thought of as a spherical truncated icosahedron. Many of the cutting forms used for the work were found in contemporary ball design and went along with the collection Mappa Mundi that I was building up parallel to this work. Contrary to the unfolded balls- that were supposed to alienate in their unfolded stage- I wanted to give the skinned polygons some hint to their former spherical shape, a visual code so to speak. I especially liked the unfolded cutting form of a classical Mercator style globe were one can fit the parts together by aligning the continental shapes to each other. North and South Pole give a clear
sense of up and down and North America is to the left and East Asia to the right. I was searching for an equivalent image that would work in a more abstract but basically similar way.I found it in the simple image of text and its simple classifications of linearity. Linear writing systems are those in which the characters are composed of lines, such as the Latin alphabet.
Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols, within our understanding of text it comes in the Latin alphabetic form. It is cultural as well as cognitive anchored and understood as a- left to right pattern and going from the top to the bottom of the page. The text images that I used were unique for each polyhedral design and based on a written text that I manipulated with a set of Photoshop filters to a point that they were unreadable but still recognized as an continuing text face.
I was building spatial paper models of the polygons and marked the direction of the text direction as if it would run around a balloon shape, spiraling from up to down. When these models were back in a flat unfolded shape the text image was of course aligned along the curves of its former spatial form. Through this visual presentation the observer gets a clue how the fragments are connected to each other. The text was applied to the material collagen by using mirrored ink jet prints in the stage when the material has been moisturized and can be imprinted. Through its special structure it will suck in the ink without that it would further spread into a fuzzy blur.
Likewise the skin is the bodies most outer boarder, the material of the skinned polygons is a fragile layer tissue called collagen.
Collagen is the main protein of connective tissue in animals and the most abundant protein in mammals, making up about 25% to 35% of the whole-body protein content. Collagen is one of the long, fibrous structural proteins it is responsible for skin strength.
From the Greek for glue, kolla, the word collagen means, "glue producer" and refers to the early process of boiling the skin and sinews of animals to obtain glue. Egyptians already used the Collagen adhesive about 2000 BC, and Native Americans used it in bows about 1500 years ago.
The collagen that I used was medical collagen that derived from young beef.
I obtained a great amount of it during a job doing nightshifts in a pharmaceutical company that were making anti wrinkle masks. Like most artist I do get exited discovering transitory materials used in industrial processes, there is so much material that we never get to see. Collagen was right away a big brainstormer. The material comes in 1-3 mm A3 sheets and is white, foam like and odorless. Similar to wood it seems to have an internal pointed structure, meaning one direction that one can easily rip. Moisturized it becomes flexible and can be stretched.
The polyhedral cutting forms that I used, started as construction drawings on paper and remains as underlying image. (I always liked to keep the process visible.)The wet collagen was fixed with needles to the joints of the construction drawing, Within a several day long drying process the material started to shrink. This way all the straight lines turn into curves as the tension forces start to work within the construction.
I especially like this point of the creation. From here an uncontrollable random element takes over the mathematic and geometrical concept. It’s out of my hands and I enjoy becoming the exited and surprised observer.

Spheres

2009-02-24T20:42:00.000+02:00

Spheres
2002
90x70x10cm, six objects
Frottage on semitransparent folio, foam object underneath

The Spheres are graphite rubbings of surfaces from various unfolded sport balls. A halo, nimbus like ring of light surrounds the outlines of the objects shape. The fuzzy aura that illuminates the frottage is emerging from a massive foam shape inside the frame.
In art, frottage (from French frotter, "to rub") is a surrealist and "automatic" method of creative production mostly known by the works of Max Ernst.
In frottage the artist takes a pencil or other drawing tool and makes a "rubbing" over a textured surface. I have experimented a lot with this technique in the past and it periodically comes back in my work.
For a genealogist as well as Archeologists the frottage or rubbing has often become the last record of grave monuments and engraved records that rapidly deteriorating.
The works seem to reefer to archeological finds and reveal their inner life best while being past.

Dome-interior/exterior

2009-02-24T20:06:00.000+02:00

Domes- interior/exterior
2000
Inside: B/W photographs, glass fiber tissue, oil kit, steel construction
Outside: synthetic fiber, graphite rubbing, steel construction

Starting point for the Installation Domes- interior/exterior was a sports and recreation venue, mainly used for soccer that was covered by an air supported structure. An air-supported structure derives its structural integrity from the use of internal pressurized air to inflate a pliable material (i.e. structural fabric) envelope, so that air is the main support of the structure. These unusual shelters consist of a structural membrane anchored to the ground to form an airtight joint and supported in its design shape by the internal air pressure, maintained by a giant fan blowing air into the structure.
The tent was lying like a white massive shape in the landscape and it often patched and ragged skin made it look like an organic being, an impression that was even stronger at the inside, when surrounded by the yellowish membrane.
The interior air pressure required for air-supported structures is not as much as most people expect but still the compressed air was irritating ones hearing ability and did weird things to the acoustics.
The contrast of the interior and exterior was so impressive that they became two different rooms in form of the “Domes” installation. The inside was photographed in 360*angle and reconstructed as room. The big black and white photography’s were treaded with a layer of fiberglass net and oil kit, which is also used by restaurateurs in old buildings. The room can be entered.
The outside Dome consists of a 36-sqm frottage and cannot be entered. I made this graphite rubbing with help of three assistants on the outside of the buildings membrane.

Libary

2009-02-24T19:54:00.000+02:00

Library
2001
Idea-sketch for a work in the meeting room of a new media company in Germany.
Not realized

The images of this work originated when I was working on a proposal for a company working in the development of new media. Digital libraries belong to an emerging new culture. Thereby questions concerning production, collection, classification and dissemination of knowledge arise. How is the integrity and sustainability of these collections economically, technically and culturally guaranteed?
A digital culture does not mean that, say; the culture of the book will disappear. Different media having different qualities do not replace each other; -oral culture did not disappear with the invention of writing or with the appearance printed works.
Libraries, digital or otherwise, are just one element in a larger circle through which infomation travels from production to ultimate consumption. They fuse in a stream of synergy with other authors, publishers, distributors and user communities.
But libraries have to come to symbolize and to exemplify the values we impute to the entire circle.
What we say about digital libraries and how we understand them embodies and signals our attitude toward the place of information in our culture. To this extent, it is potentially of great significance how we construct digital libraries and how we talk about them and who is includedin the conversation.
The photographs for this image were taken the University library of Finland, Helsinki that underwent major changes at this point. It was in a transitory state at which it changed from a functioning library to an architectonical showcase, the books were moving out external storage places and were digitalized. Future plans for the beautiful main room of the library were to completely free it from his previous function. It was meant to become a “piazza academia”- a meeting point for discussion and science- what made it interesting for me to work with.
The high resolute image is a collage assembled by many 100 shots that I took in the summer 98/99 at the location. The images were digitized, puzzled together and forged to a panorama view. The interior was stripped free from reading desks and microfilm units and other irritations associated with functioning libraries. The image doesn’t have a deep sharpness that creates an alienating and artificial atmosphere.
The image was supposed to be printed on an UV resistant material that replaces the sunscreens of the window. With a simple switch the amber colored world would decent and change the atmosphere of the location.

Tide ruler

2009-02-24T19:46:00.000+02:00

Tide ruler
2000
Glass plates, Amoniumchlorid crystal, metal framed
400 x 40 x 8 cm
The name of the work refers to the measure points that you find in places were the water high is constantly changing and monitored. At some places the records cover centuries, for example as in Amsterdam, where data dating back to 1700 is available.
At low water, surfaces are exposed or ‘emerged’ whereas at high water and ‘immersed’ when underwater. When the water level falls it is marking the landscape with mineral sedimentation. Sediment is any particulate matter that can be transported by fluid flow that becomes visible in patterns of erosion and in depositions observed on the surfaces of the involved material (rocks, trees, boats etc.)
In geology or physical geography the sediment transport and fluvial processes relate to flowing water in natural systems. Beach sands and river channel deposits are examples of fluvial transport and deposition, though sediment also often settles out of slow-moving or standing water in lakes and oceans. Sediment moved by water is fixed by its density and viscosity. In typical rivers the maximum size of this sediment is of sand and gravel (<32>), but larger floods can carry boulders.
Finland is a living example of the enormous powers of water and ices that have smooth grinded rock surfaces and randomly piled boulders (in eastern direction). The most common type of rock is granite. It is a ubiquitous part of the scenery, visible wherever there is no soil cover. Finland is also one of the few countries in the world whose surface area is still growing. Owing to the post-glacial rebound that has been taking place since the last ice age, the surface area of the country is growing by about 7 square kilometers (2.7 square miles) a year.
In the work Tide ruler I wanted to comment on the idea of a transitory landscape by combining visible grows within a measurable system. For this installation I was using in water dissolved ammonium chloride a chemical that regenerates into crystal when the water is vaporizing. Numbers and marks stand for the time (hours) in which the crystals grew in bounded areas of different sizes.

Instant pages

2009-02-24T19:31:00.000+02:00

Instant pages
1999
Wood, synthetic rope, paper, instant coffee
1200x350x200cm

There are more than 400 prints that were used in the installation “Instant pages”.
All of them were manufactured during work time at a factory department that produced Instant coffee.
During my daily shift I used to dip papers sheets in the watery coffee pigment and placed them between the ovens and washing machines.
Moisture, steam, heat and the placing on various surfaces originated the random structures and shades on the paper. I did not intervene the process- just created the circumstances of becoming. The duration of the placing varied between hours and weeks. It was all big experiment and it has this random element that made it especially interesting for me like a farmer bringing home its harvest.
A random process is a repeating process whose outcomes follow no deterministic pattern and is therefore thought to be unusable for predictable and desired results.
Now in art we have a long tradition using this unpredictability’s in various forms. I am just one in a long line of artists getting hooked on this methods. No, I do not have a problem with the idea that randomness exists; quiet to the contrary.
I see those prints as a documentation of that period in which they have been created.
I choose for the accordion like image of a compressing or expanding corridor to show the ongoing idea of this experiment. The length of the corridor depended on the amount of prints but could be further expanded.

Draw a line

2009-02-24T19:26:00.000+02:00

Draw a line
1999
Graphite, diffusion folio, 20 kg graphite block on dragging gear

After and during graduation I have been taken part in several “Art in public” projects to experiment with performance and installations. The project “Virtual -visual “ took place in the German city of Dorsten and was promoted as an art happening.
The building our crew was working in was facing major reconstruction and was currently more or less abandoned. In its transitory state it was open to experimental work and activities.
The buildings facilities had functioned in various ways, for example as a magazine storage, an office and as a primary school. Throughout the last ten years it had been an asylum for war refugees. I paid attention of one particular wing that functioned as a teaching room and
had been further divided into three smaller sections in order to serve as living spaces.
This place was interesting in the sense that their walls were scratched and typographically marked by former tenants and displayed various names and drawn sketches. Furthermore pale marks on the linoleum floor still gave slide hints towards its colorful history and earlier size and function.
I decided to draw a line and connect the three sections again.
Before the breaking of the walls I made a frottage (graphite rubbing of the wall surface on semitransparent folio) on partitions that I wanted to open.
After breaking two openings into the walls, the frottage were placed back to cover the new entrances, only illuminated by the natural light of the next room.
The line on the ground was done by a solid piece of graphite that was dragged over the floor during an hour of walking the new line.

Mark a place

2009-02-24T19:21:00.000+02:00

Mark a place
1999
Performance/ installation
Green foam crosses temporarily marking pleased but normally inhabitual places on a buildings façade, free climbing gear and determination

The old industrial building in Dorsten that was offered for artist interventions during the Exhibition Virtual-visual was such a good climbing area. There is nothing more inviting like an industrial brownstone for an urban climber to go for a close encounter vertical exploration on its outer walls.
I started climbing when I was a young country boy in various trees and further went for rock climbing when I was teenager in the Obereifel and the south of France.
I never advanced behind a medium level but I lost my fear of heights and truly feel safe within my capabilities. For the exhibition I was well prepared and had all the gear and determination to go for a try. For a day I explored the buildings outer façade and placed the green crosses on every spot that seemed to have been a nice place to visit. I marked those places.

Position yourself

2009-02-24T19:15:00.000+02:00

Position yourself
1999
Jumping discs, steel bouncing spirals, rubber gravel support mats, 68 documentary photos in zip lock bags
One more of this crazy after graduation projects that I realized in collaboration with the German artist Kolja Clemens and the Dutch artist Jochem van Weijl.
The installation was presented on the group exhibition Update 99 in Gronau, Germany and went along with a photo presentation of a high-speed journey though several European countries.
During the journey we (myself and the above mentioned) placed a prefabricated cross in landscapes, interior settings, urban environments etc and photo documented each place. These photos marked moment and place during four days of continuous traveling through Germany, Holland, France, Denmark, Belgium, and England.
The material for the installation is heavy-duty stuff normally used for children playgrounds. The two platforms marked with the cross sign where allowed to enter and position oneself.
Kids got crazy, adults got weary.
I was allowed to present this work in the studio space of the German artist LUPO in the
Villa ARTig (art cooperative Gronau) during the annual exhibition Update 99 in Germany.

Craftman´s model- Macrocosm

2009-02-24T19:08:00.000+02:00

Craftsman’s Model- Macrocosm
1999
Paper, Graphite, Tape, Pasteboard, Light tubes, Salt, Transformators, Wire, Stainless steel.

Macrocosm is the first of the three-parted- Macro, meso and microcosm Installation-project under the name of “Craftsman’s model” presented at my final graduation show at the Aki (art academy Enschede).
Now this is obviously a mighty old work to have here on the blog, but it somehow still deals and refers to a lot of issues that I have been dealing and still do nowadays and I got ambitious to dig it up again. Talk about that.
The idea behind -Macro, meso and microcosm is an ancient Greek schema of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of the cosmos, from the largest scale (macrocosm or universe-level), towards forms and measures of everyday life (this represents the visual and haptical relevant and conceivable objects within the living environment called-middle or mesocosm) and all the way down to the smallest scale (microcosm or sub-sub-atomic or even metaphysical-level).
This concept matches with the inside we gained through chaos theory and its observations in the field of fractal geometrics.
As popular example serves that the satellite images of coastlines of Norway seem to resemble the shore lines of the Norwegian coastal mappings that than again seems to resemble the structures that one can observe while walking Norway’s rocky shores (Fjords).
By setting up the Craftsman’s model I was blessed by a patron that provided me with a 400-m2 industrial loft in witch during a six-month period had the chance to set up a field laboratory- to study the different dimensions by using mathematical (Macrocosm), optical (Mesocosm) and chemical/ mineralogical (Microcosm) level.
The exhibition title “Craftsman’s model” derived from Plato’s Timaeus. C.360 B.C. in which he compares the creating force (God) with a Craftsman modeling with the materials that are available
to him- towards the ideal and eternal bodies.
The ideal eternal bodies are associated each of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, and fire) with a regular solid (geometrical bodies).
Earth was associated with the cube, air with the octahedron, water with the icosahedron, and fire with the tetrahedron. Thinking from a sculpture’s perspective one can hardly come up with a more plastically- logical thinking. There are five elements, whose shapes inhered the idea and very soul of matter. As you follow his reasoning, you can see what I am bragging on about.
There was intuitive justification for these associations: the heat of fire feels sharp and stabbing (like little pyramid shaped tetrahedral). Air is made of the octahedron; its round shape and minuscule components are so smooth that one can barely feel it. Water, the icosahedron, flows out of one's hand when picked up, as if it is made of tiny little balls. By contrast, a highly un-spherical solid, the hexahedron (cube) represents earth. These clumsy little solids cause dirt to crumble and break when picked up, in stark difference to the smooth flow of water. The fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarks, "...the god used for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven". Aristotle added a fifth element, aithêr ("ether" in English) and postulated that the heavens were made of this element, but he had no interest in matching it with Plato's fifth solid.

Well let’s talk about the Macrocosm, which refers to the celestial bodies we can observe in the night sky. Western astrology has had a profound influence over the past few thousand years on Western and Eastern cultures. In the middle Ages, when the educated of the time believed in astrology, the system of heavenly spheres and bodies was believed to reflect on the system of knowledge and the world itself below.
In the 16th century, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler attempted to find a relation between the five known planets at that time (excluding the Earth) and the five Platonic solids.
In Mysterium Cosmographicum, published in 1596, Kepler laid out a model of the solar system in which the five solids were set inside one another and separated by a series of inscribed and circumscribed spheres. The six spheres each corresponded to one of the planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). The solids were ordered with the innermost being the octahedron, followed by the icosahedron, dodecahedron, tetrahedron, and finally the cube. In this way the Platonic solids dictated the structure of the solar system and the distance relationships between the planets.
I am not very familiar with the here quoted discipline and even though it has been inspirational influence my interest towards the macrocosm came from other angles. The idea of the Craftsman’s model exhibition was all about first hand experience and experimenting. Thinking about Kepler´s approach it becomes quite obvious that dealing with the stars is always linked to a fascination with geometry and structure.
Think about a pitch-black nigh sky. Stars radiant like needle puncture points in tar sheets.
A first imprinted impulse we feel is connecting the most radiant points with lines. It’s just a human approach that we want to grasp substance and shape within the sheer fathomless deepness.
The installation Macrocosm is showing four geometrical bodies that play with concept of space. Just like the platonic forms of the crystals also two forms of triangles construct these shapes. While the geometrical shape of for example crystals arise through the process of evolution - the objects of the Macrocosm are constructed by the human mind. The four shown constructions are the only possible spatial spherical constructions that can be constructed using the building blocks of the craftsman’s model, that using the same triangles but do not represent the platonic bodies.
The first construction drawing was done with graphite, tape and pasteboard to paper on the wall. For the basic lines that were added later on I used light uses and steel-profiles. It was very important for me to show all steps of the development process in this work. The original drawing became as well as the cables and electric elements part of the final picture.
Seen from different angles the objects might seem to be spatial but they consist out of two-dimensional layers.
Light-tubes are taped from the backside and dimmed by a thin layer of salt crystals. An unintentional but worth to mentioning side effect was that the light-figures stayed for a few minutes as a retina-reflection in the eye of the visitors

Craftman´s model- Mesocosm

2009-02-24T18:53:00.000+02:00

Mesocosm
1998
Expanded plastic plates, 36 Lenses (various sizes), Cooper-sticks, Diffusion filter A4 (printed)

The Mesocosm (lat. Middle) is the world of the human being and its natural and artificial surrounding. Objects of the Mesocosm are the house I live in, the bike that I ride, a drawing pen or the cup of coffee that I have in the morning. These objects are relevant in my daily life and exist in a size I am used to perceive with my senses.
In a way I found it fitting to use the optical mechanism of the camera obscura (Latin dark chamber) in this work. It is one of the inventions leading to photography The principle can be demonstrated with a box with a hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface where it is reproduced, in color, and upside-down. The image's perspective is accurate. Closing the view to the natural world- and channeling it back by means of this optical devise into the exhibition space- was enough alienating to make one self-rethink its own process of perception.
For the installation Mesocosm I used the whole window front of the exhibition-space.
The six windows consisting of six elements each were covered. For the covering
I used white expanded plastic plates that were just transparent enough to weaken the natural light. In the middle of each plate I placed lenses of various sizes. Like in some practical
camera obscura I used a lens rather than a pinhole because it allows a larger aperture, giving a usable brightness while maintaining focus. The outside world was projected upside down onto diffusion-filters that were placed in front of the various lenses.
The filters are printed with chosen passages out of the Timaeus. The text images have been printed in a way that they were fading towards the midpoint of the filter on which the Image was focused on.
The Text elements were not readable connected only in the sense of origin and theme.

Craftman`s Model- Microcosm

2009-02-24T18:19:00.000+02:00

Craftsman’s model- Microcosm
1999
Glass, Steel, Cotton rope, Distilled water, Natriumchlorid, Copper II sulfate, Amoniumchlorid, Aluminiumkaliumsulfat dodekahydrat, Kaliumhexazyanoferrat II trihydrat, Amoniumiron II Sulfate hexahydrat, Nickel II sulfate hexahydrat

With Pythagoras came the discovery of the golden ratio and its philosophical conception called the Golden mean. The Greeks observed obsessively the golden ratio in many parts of the ordered universe both large and small.
Philosophically, the Greeks were concerned with a rational explanation of everything and saw the repetition of the golden mean throughout the world and all levels of reality as a step towards a unifying theory. In short, it is the recognition that the same traits appear in entities of many different sizes, from Macro to Meso to Microcosm, (In Soccer ball lingo meaning- Stars, house and atom- or the Norway coastline allegory that I mentioned in connection to the Macrocosm work).
For Plato lacking electron microscopes and other useful contemporary tools his reasoning was purely based on logical thinking and mathematics. His reasoning logical follows that the smallest possible particle (atom) is a triangle, following that can arranged to form the five Elements (Platonic solids).
In geometry, a Platonic solid is a convex regular polyhedron. These are the three-dimensional analogs of the convex regular polygons. There are precisely five such figures; they are unique in that the faces, edges and angles are all congruent.
These are the following.
Tetrahedron/ fire (4 faced), Hexahedron/ earth (6 faced), Octahedron/ air (8 faced), Dodecahedron/ ether (12 faced) and Icosahedron/ water (20 faced).
For the installation Microcosm I was searching for specific chemicals that would inherited within their arrangement of atoms, ions, or molecules the ability to crystallize in shapes that represent the visual representations of the five platonic solids.
The process that I was aiming at was to dissolve the chemicals in distilled water and let them regenerate over a long drying process on large glass plates. The process of forming a crystalline structure from a fluid or from materials dissolved in the fluid is often referred to as crystallization. Crystalline structures occur in all classes of materials, with all types of chemical bonds. While the term "crystal" has a precise meaning within materials science and solid-state physics, colloquially "crystal" refers to solid objects that exhibit well defined and often pleasing geometric shapes
Now this was soon obvious to be a very immature thought, because this could only happen
in three of the desired shapes and further- to have a perfect symmetrical growing process could be only achieved in zero gravity environment.
For the installation Microcosm I was working in co-operation with the Institute of inorganic chemistry in Muenster that advised and assisted me in my research.
The chemicals I was using where able to crystallize in special regular solids somewhat close to the platonic (or ideal) forms.
After documenting the process, six of them where hanged in the space forming a halve circle around the seventh that was presented as a table. During the exhibition I let drops of Cooper II sulfate saturated solution fall onto this particular one to visualize the process of becoming.
The ingredients where presented in glass vessels in a corner of the same room.

Panta rhei

2009-02-24T18:12:00.000+02:00

Panta rhei
1999
Different plastics (UV constant), Fiberglas, Polio resin,
Anchor (steel/ concrete)
1000 x 150 x 10 cm

Water is an element that we can’t tear our eyes away from. It flows, unites with other waters, to return to the sea, or is it the sea returning to us?
It erodes, it carries along it forces us to reflect on ourselves. But water not only consumes, it also nourishes. As a symbol as well as in practice- water is necessary for life, it purifies, refreshes and heals. When it is polluted it terrifies us and reminds us of our own mortality.

The project “Water in movement” took place in Meppel a small town in the western Netherlands. Artists were asked to develop ideas for installations that could be placed inside artificial canals-in the Netherlands called grachten- that were running through the town. There are two types of canals in the Netherlands: water conveyance canals, which are used for the delivery of water, and waterways, which are navigable transportation canals used for passage of goods and people often connected to the sea or lakes. Meppel had three canals named Heerengracht, Keizersgracht en Prinsengracht-though not being circular- still named after the most famous waterways in Amsterdam, - but by installing solid bridges and dams, these were not shippable anymore. The city wanted artworks that referred to their former origin and to the water as moving element.
Walking along the grachten I was comparing the image of the city map with certain places in the surrounding. My chosen place had no name on the card so I decided to ride one into the water. Panta rhei.
The two word's panta rhei are known within the ontology as the dynamic view of Life. In combination they can be freely translated into “everything is streaming.”
Heraclit is often named in connection to this, thought he might have asserted nothing more profound other than the thought that we exist in a field or continuum in which everything is constantly in flux or process. Heraclit is known for his doctrine of change being central to the universe and stating that the Logos is the fundamental order of all.
However, his assertion of flow is coupled with the enigmatic river image. The word rhei is simply the Greek word for "to stream."
I used the Greek letter type because of origin and its cursive writing style
In addition to being used for writing Modern Greek its letters are today used as symbols in mathematics and science and represent particle names in physics.
It is the first and oldest alphabet in the narrow sense that it notes each vowel and consonant with a separate symbol.
Originally alphabets were written entirely in capital letters, spaced between well-defined upper and lower bounds. When written quickly with a pen, these tended to turn into rounder and much simpler forms. It is from these that the first minuscule hands developed, the half-uncials and cursive minuscule, which no longer stay bound between a pair of lines.
The word minuscule is often spelled miniscule, by association with the unrelated word miniature. Nevertheless I find this detail fitting because I somehow related the size of the letter type in relation to the size of written names in the map. In the act of naming a place we are approaching to the same.

Tabula rasa

2009-02-24T18:05:00.000+02:00

From the work series about the origin of ideas, -Tabula rasa.

Tabula rasa
1998
Oak, wax,
Six plates, quotation in six languages

Art and philosophy are often thrown in the same pot during discussions, by meaning that both are concerned with issues aside from mainstream concerns therefore frequently are labeled as being difficult if not fussy. Throughout time our disciplines have developed such highly tuned and refined language that it often creates an alienating effect on some
Leaving this obvious prerogative aside there is an inevitable difference between our fields of research. To say it in a blunt way one could state that- while Philosophy is concerned to free the thought from the ballast of unnecessary imagery and to condense facts from the vapor of thought, the visual art tends to the opposite searching for the pure shape the visual form liberated from means of justification and explanation
This is of cause very simplified and in reality I now quite little colleges that are radical formalistic or people that engage in philosophy that can state opinions without the use of visual symbols and iconography. I am attracted by this bicameral psyche dilemma.
During the last year of my final work I frequently engaged my father, - that was amazingly agile within philosophical thought in discussions, to counteract my visual ideas with his knowledge to form a sort of synergy. By profession he was a practicing pädiatritan, specialized in children with mental and motoric disabilities and naturally we were soon discussing a lot about cognitive developing processes of children, the inborn and acquired grows in mental and motoric functions.
Where do ideas and abilities generate? It let me to the series of works under the term, - Origin of ideas.
In 1998, I participated in a two-week international workshop in the Monastery Bentlage in Rheine, Germany that was called, - Local time. At the workshop I created the series of wax plates (Latin: blank slate or originating from the tabula rasa-wax plate, a early writing tool) that all had been engraved in the language of the participating nationalities. (English, Finnish, French, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese).
“There is nothing in your mind, that has not been in your senses”
Sections sewed out of a single oak beam and covered with wax assembled the plates; the text image was hammered into the wax with lead letter blocks from a printing press.
The quotation originates from John Locke and refers to the epistemological thesis that individual human beings are born with no built-in mental content, in a word, "blank", and that their entire resource of knowledge is built up gradually from their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world. This work is one of three-contra dictionary works, -all dealing with the origin of ideas in philosophical history.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz that pointed out the structures on the rough wax surface and its translucency - that lets the underlying surface shine through, was using these visual metaphors to contradict John Locks statement. His response to the thesis was s to argue that there always is an under laying structure. He, G.W.L., added therefore to the Statement of “ There is nothing in your mind, that has not been in your senses” the appendix” except the mind itself”.

No inborn ideas

2009-02-24T17:59:00.000+02:00

From the work series origin of ideas

“ No inborn idea”
1998
Oaks, wax, lead, 40x30cm (closed)

In philosophy and psychology, an innate idea is a concept or item of knowledge, which is said to be universal to all humanity—that is, something people are born with rather than something people have learned through experience. The issue is controversial, and can be said to be an aspect of a long-running nature versus nurture debate, albeit one localized to the question of understanding human cognition. The statement “Non innate ideas”. was formulated by William of Ockham. He argued that the mind is in fact devoid of all knowledge or ideas at birth; it is a blank sheet or tabula rasa. He argued that all our ideas are constructed in the mind via a process of constant composition and decomposition of the input that we receive through our senses.
Again I used the material wax as inprint able metaphor on the one side, and a lead cast positive on the other. The book itself is display and printing press at the same time.
The protagonist William of Baskerville in the Book “Name of the rose”, by Umberto Eco is said to be based on the upper mentioned.

Universalia

2009-02-24T17:48:00.000+02:00

From the work series origin of ideas
Universalia
1998
Glass fiber, folio, and oil
400x150x300cm

In philosophy of mind, dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, which begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical.
I have been quite interested with this issue and several of my works are based on a visual metaphors originating from arguments that have been made both for and against this thesis. Combining the vise/versa in a visual form. Sometimes the thesis and counter thesis can be found within the visual language of the same work.
Ideas on mind/body dualism originate at least as far back as Zarathushtra. Plato and Aristotle deal with speculations as to the existence of an incorporeal soul that bore the faculties of intelligence and wisdom. They maintained, for different reasons, that a person’s knowledge
(a faculty of the mind or soul) could not be identified with, or explained in terms of, their physical body.
Plato makes it clear, in the Phaedo, that the Forms are the universalia ante rem, i.e. they are universal concepts (or ideas), which make the entire phenomenal world intelligible.
Thomas of Aquin, that is known for his effort to combine Christian believe with Philosophical thought formulated the quotation that I used in this work.
Universalia sunt realia ante rem, (The idea exists before the actual thing), has been a mantra against Occhams razor blade argument.
The Sentence has been spliced in four sequences and airbrushed on thin glass fiber textile hovering over an abyss of blackness. (Black folio, covered with a thin layer of oil).

Ockam´s razor

2009-02-24T17:41:00.000+02:00

From the work series about the origin of ideas, Ockam`s Razor

Ockam`s Razor
1998
Dyed fiberglass, charcoal

Ockham's razor is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The term razor refers to the act of shaving away unnecessary assumptions to get to the simplest explanation.
In the novel by Umberto Eco “Name of the rose” an historical 14th century whodunit murder mystery one can find this thought of deductive reasoning applied by the main character William of Baskerville whose figure is based on the upper mentioned.
I found this thought fitting while working on this installation, a sort of artistic application of the scholastic method. Three by three was the exhibitions title; literally meaning that I could only use 12 sqm of space and according to this I choose this sliced and carbonized materials.

Introspection

2009-02-24T17:34:00.000+02:00

Introspection
1999
MDF, wax, steel
150 x 100 x 250 cm

When I think about myself I adjust my look into a room somewhere behind my eyes. Not only inside of me I sense this room but suppose to find the same in every human being. During a conversation I have the feeling that I speak into a room behind my opposite eyes that is similar to the one from which out I speak. Of course I know that neither in mine nor in somebody else’s head such a room exists. It makes me uncomfortable to know that there are just a big amount of physiological cells because that means I invent him every day. This concept is so deeply ingrained in our thinking process that we might think we understand it better than we do.
For the installation Introspection I used the image of two rooms that are separated by a stripe code. The vertical cuts in the wood plate are filled with wax that lets only scanty light coming through. The image of the stripe code was used in the sense of the visual and abstract flow of information between these rooms. The geometry of the rooms is implied with steel profiles that work like a perspective drawing.

Projected imagonary

2009-02-24T17:25:00.000+02:00

Projected imagery
1997
Idea scetch- not realized

The Idea for this work came during an exhibition in the Industry Museum Pieberg in Osnabrück.
It was the result of a workshop with the name “Industrial culture- the new culture?”
The project was dealing with the former mining area called Piesberg that exist as a gigantic gaping hole in the landscape. Walking through this man made canyon I constantly had to make up names to describe certain places in this alienating surrounding, which let me think about how we name and project our culture on a unnamed landscape.
The Moon is the only celestial body to which humans have traveled and upon which humans have performed a manned landing. The Moon's surface is marked by impact craters, which form when asteroids and comets collide with the lunar surface.
There are about half a million craters with diameters greater than 1 km on the moon (and
human made objects like the golf balls from Alan Shepard's driving practice during Apollo 14).
A name is a label for a human or animal, thing, place, and even an idea or concept, normally used to distinguish one from another.
Planetary nomenclature, - is a system of naming uniquely identified features on the surface of a celestial body in order that it can be easily located, described, and discussed. The task of assigning the official names is performed by the IAU (International Astronomical Union), in response to the need for unambiguous names for astronomical objects it has created a number of systematic naming systems for bodies of various sorts.
When high-resolution images and maps of a planet become available a theme for naming features is chosen. Later additional names can be requested that describe specific surfaces, features, or geologic formations. Of cause there are rules governing the process, here a few of them.
-Individual names chosen for each body should be expressed in the language of origin. Transliteration for various alphabets should be given, but there will be no translation from one language to another (in the 17th century, Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi gave many craters the names they still have today, it would be harder for us if the Russian or Chinese had the first choice)
-No names having political, military or religious significance may be used, except for names of political figures prior to the 19th century. (Note: Apparently this only goes for religions that are widely practiced today, since gods and goddesses of ancient religions are obviously acceptable to the IAU).
-Commemoration of persons on planetary bodies is reserved for persons of high and enduring international standing. Persons being so honored must have been deceased for at least three years. Craters are generally named after deceased scientists, scholars, artists and explorers who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their field. Additionally, craters in or around Mare Moscoviense are named after deceased Russian cosmonauts and craters in and around Apollo crater are named after deceased American astronauts.