Polar-Opposite Forms of the Third Ground

2022

30”x30”x65”

Deconstructed projector, fan, custom printed velour fabric with 5 days of CA seismographic data. The form is modeled from Benjamin Brett’s schematics of “The horn-shaped onde corolla” as delineated in his book, Geometrical Psychology, or, The Science of Representation. Paper mache, wood, pearlite, and mica stand

Each panel of this sculpture is upholstered with a printed fabric that depicts a unique 24 hour period of CA seismic activity. The surface of the sculpture indicates the existence of earthquakes, legible to the viewer only through the visual representation of seismographic data - an aesthetic language that says more about the desire to predict and contain the earthquake than it does about the phenomenal experience itself. The sculpture is component of an installation titled, “Like Luck”, in which visual language from Enlightenment era Rational aesthetics, such as mystical diagrams, a mad mathematician's geometric schematics, and CA seismographic data, and converts their claims of coherence into an abstracted and poetic experience.