Concentricity, 2019 (Materials) | hypodermic needles, Steel, Industrial Computer,
Compressed Air Components, Alumnium Dishes. | Dimensions: ❬4.5m x 4.5m x 5m❭ Photographer: Peter William Holden @ Westflügel, Leipzig, Germany.
Do you know that feeling when you've taken LSD and, while observing a nondescript object, a jolt suddenly hits you? You notice an incredible wealth of details! Something you thought was mundane is actually incredibly beautiful, filled with textures and colors you've never contemplated. The more you look, the more you discover. Finding yourself sucked into a concentric universe where the visible stretches out to what seems like infinity in a familiar way, similar to two juxtaposed mirrors. Experiences like this stay with you, a reminder never to forget the intrinsic beauty within everything, a refresh to a childlike state where everything is wondrous.
One summer, while caught in a violent storm and sheltering under a motorway flyover. Taking great pleasure, I watched raindrops fall in randomly scattered puddles. I contemplated the beautiful concentric circles, how they appeared to dance across the pools in my field of vision. I had a perception of how strange it would be if suddenly the random patterns began to correlate! What information could they communicate? "Concentricity" is the subsequent investigation of that concept, my endeavor to give a language/meaning to the droplets.
The artwork consists of eight identical water-filled dishes arranged in a circular pattern on the floor. A few meters suspended above these dishes hover a sculptural apparatus of glistening tubing, hypodermic needles, bottles, and valves. Beyond that, clamped to the central shaft, a computer containing algorithms to synthesize and choreograph rain droplets. The subsequent concentric circles that form as water droplets hit the surface of the water pools below project themselves onto the adjacent wall via a focused beam of light reflecting the water's surface.
An animation of patterns moving within the arranged dishes is thus visible to the observer.