skip to main |
skip to sidebar
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.
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
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.
