| | Mechanical Drawings-
These drawings are created with the T16 Mechanical Pencils. | Electricity also still evokes, on an unconscious level, images of that paradoxical figure of alchemy, Mercurius, and of the elusive vital fluid that transcends the merely mechanical. Indeed, the strange paradoxes of modern quantum mechanics and the endless popular speculations on the role of consciousness in the material world, not to mention the actual transmutation of metals now possible, seem to be outward manifestations of the symbols that drove alchemy and now drive modern physics.
| | -Ernst Benz, The Theology of Electricity |
At the heart of every project I undertake is an interest in the system. Whether it is an environment, structure, circuit, schematic, there is an underlying exchange, and flow, that fascinates me. Current fashion dictates that to be granted notoriety, one must prove independent thought, personal vision, and solitary experience. This is but a fabrication of the truth, as growth and change are collective experiences. Similarly, no other system of life, or force, can exist without the systems that surround it.
The series T17 (Mechanical Drawings / Electrical Field Drawings) takes this idea in the form of rudimentary circuitry. We tend these days to think of electricity as a linear element to be piped into our houses much like water, forgetting that both exist much more abundantly as waves. These drawings are produced by the most simplistic robotic systems, who’s sole purpose is to express it’s own experience in the most sophisticated and subtle drawings it can possibly create. The results are all reminiscent of the fields, or waves, that electricity most naturally forms. It is, in this sense, a translation of a human-made electrical structure’s experience back into electricity’s native language.
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