Sculptures for Distant Places
Above: Sculptures for Distant Places at Filmwinter 2018, Stuttgart, Germany.
Sculptures for Distant Places are a series of three networked sculptures titled Sculpture for Mountains, Sculpture for Lakes and Sculpture for Forests. They are a continuation and development of ideas conceived during the creation of Netscapes. Each sculpture has been created in response to a specific place in Canada, Japan and the Czech Republic, which is streamed via webcam online. The sculptures employ aspects of those sites and combine them with aspects of the gallery, the site from which the sculptures are seen, as input. The outcome, are visual and aural sculptures assembled as a result of the combination of distant and local sites, their places and times merged through the space of a network and allowing act on each other.
Above: Sculptures for Mountains.
Sculpture for Mountains consists of a square skewed form that hovers over a view of the Town of Banff, Canada as seen from the top of Sulphur Mountain in Banff National Park. Initially the sculpture appears metallic as it reflects the landscape around it. However, on detecting sound within the gallery the sculpture is ‘pinged’, a term that refers to a response time test employed with websites online, to verify the time light takes to travel between sites. Employing this time as a delay the sculpture responds to the sound as an echo by flexing and generates its own sound that is returned to the gallery.
Above: Sculptures for Lakes.
Sculpture for Lakes is an assemblage of circular forms that includes a disc with inner circular cut-out and a rotating circle of stones. The forms hover over the lake in front of Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion Temple, in Kyoto, Japan. The sculptures movement, its forms vertical position as well as the sound it produces is governed by the current time, time of sunrise and sunset at the gallery.
Above: Sculptures for Forests.
Sculpture for Forests includes three constructed forms derived from triangles whose surfaces are covered with animated triangular patterns or colours. The sculpture is situated in a clearcut forest, that is a forest where trees have been removed in order to encourage regeneration, at the Poledník viewing tower in the Šumava National Park, Czech Republic. When the gallery is unoccupied the sculpture’s triangular pattern animates slowly however when movement is detected the pattern is interrupted and influenced. Coloured surfaces of the sculpture respond to its site and surrounding environmental conditions enabling it to react similarly to vegetation.