Consider that the fossil record humans leave behind will necessarily include those fossilized things from human prehistory which were excavated and preserved for scientific study. Fossils of species extinct for millions of years during the human time span will exist in the same strata as the remnants of a technologically advanced human society. Should our written history dissolve over the course of geological time, paleontologists of the future will be left to untangle the physical record of humanity in whatever disintegrated state it might exist in the final days of such an advanced society. Considering what humans might leave behind allows us to consider the subjectivity of interpretation and the ways in which appearance can be deceiving.
Facebook feed test, lets see if this works.
Some photoshop mashups as sketches for a new series of unnatural history. Imagine the kinds of early misinterpretations possible if paleontologists in a million years recovered our fossil record including those things we have unearthed and placed in museums along with our own physical record of human creation and engineering. These two sketches are for sculptures that I see taking the form of enormous versions of those small die-cut wooden dino skeletons one can find in natural history museums. Coming away from the crate series I am interested in other forms of interpretation that we undertake and most interesting is the interpretation of physical remnants be they animal or human in nature.
Installation views of IN-KOM-PRI-HEN-SUH-BUHL.
Many of these pieces contain peep holes which allow a viewer to see inside of the crates. Documentation of these is proving difficult but is on the way. The basic idea of these works is to manipulate the notion of what art objects are or can be to explore the broader concept of the interplay between our perception and reason; both tools which generate knowledge. The confrontation of crates, which are tangentially related to art objects by their transport, as art objects in and of themselves causes one to rethink what an art object can be, thus using expectation and reason to thwart perception. Many of these crates also contain peep holes which function as view ports to their interior. The reality of these internal views is dissonant with that of the exterior of the crate as well as with a viewer’s expectations. In this way the fantastic possibilities of the mind are laid out though playful interaction between one’s reason, expectation, and perception.
IN-KOM-PRI-HEN-SUH-BUHL statement
Art is a contemporary practice which operates uniquely in the realm of ideas or all things imaginable to the human mind. It is a question driven practice and not a means to an end but rather an end in itself because art can create possibilities which are otherwise unimaginable for their frivolity or absurdity. In this sense art is the practice of an important part of the larger realm of reason.
Questions are a driving force behind all endeavor; questions that seem unanswerable. Never contented with things as they are or things as they appear, the mind, a powerful creator, gatherer, filter and organizer of information, strives for deep explanation. Contradictions abound in the balance between the mind’s narratives, constructed and shared, and that which is perceptible. Tempered by the desire for a sensibly predictable world; the mind’s imagination is a tool which can pry open doors to new means of understanding or construct for itself unbreachable barriers to reality. Past experiences influence the rational faculty, which in turn influences perception, so new experiences obscured by the anticipated can be easily disregarded. Yet minute details masked by the mundane can be the threshold to entirely new ways of thinking.
The sum of experience and knowledge includes all concepts from those nearly universal in understanding to those only understood by a fraction of all people, incomprehensible to the rest, and constituted in reconciliation of perception and reason retarded by their interplay. As a result, what you see is not always what you get. What is real can be preferable to how things appear, and knowledge today is that which was unintelligible yesterday. Curiosity, imagination, and often absurdity are vehicles to our understanding; their direction is random or at best under the guide of a faulty compass.
Elastegrity – An adaptation of the Kenneth Snelson/Buckminster Fuller term “Tensegrity” (meaning a structure consisting of two basic units; tension cables, and compression struts, which operates using “tensional integrity.”) In this case the tension cables (which draw inward in tension) are replaced with elastic wires (which push outward) and the resulting structure maintains its integrity through the compression of struts by the elastic properties of the wire or other spring members. The term “elastegrity” was coined by me to describe these structures which I developed in the Fall of 2009.
