Cheap
or costly
Models of the fifth dimension in relation to the exhibition "Stromlinien" (streamlines) by Almut Grypstra 1. Movement models from pre-television times Last week I kept Almut
Grypstra away from work for 3 hours. She had started with the erection
for her installation here and when I was looking around I discovered in
the basement a machine for unravelling a skein. During my stay between
the yarn balls I remembered the bumbling movement of those yarn
reservoirs that I watched at my knitting great aunts. In those days
looking at this required a lot of patience because occasionally it
could take a minute or longer until the wool string which lay loosely
on the floor was knitted so tight that the ball on the floor was pulled
closer. By pulling at that string that stuck to the ball with its hairy
surface the ball received a movement impulse once in a while which
pushed it bit by bit across the floor as if by ghost's hand at
which occasion a further bit of string was unravelled.
Was it here still about a piece of pre-television history with slow picture sequence so with Grypstra are more than a dozen skeins connected to the machine which now is powered by an electric motor which unravels a large amount of strings at the same time. Even that does not just happen with speed, and maybe I should make it understood that I saw the installation as a model becasue the engine was copied in cardboard at first and shaped by creasing and folding. That is why the in its immobility frozen model seemed to me like a drawing extended into the 3rd dimension; because edges, sticky tape and strings worked as lines spread out in the room. This point of view determined our talks where the subject 'models' was prevalent. We spoke about models in natural science and technic as |
well
as the advantages of
models in art which is not guided by efficiency obligations that
ingenieurs in industry have to follow when constructing. More than with
these models conformities unfold between artists and researchers who
have to represent something that eludes the senses - be it in micro- or
macrocosm. As well
belonging here are proceedings in the subatomic world that can
be presented by mathematical forms but react paradoxically when
transferred to visible space and time conceptions which is why they
withheld themselves from a represented visibility. Trials to still
manage to do so become therefor vastly complex and sometimes even
monstrous. The most simple atom, the hydrogen atom, has only one
electron. But because it can be positioned on different tracks and
levels and be in different conditions of impulse-input its
representation is not an easy task. * Amongst the
manifold trials from a natural science point of view there are
especially beautiful ones like the modeled with spectral colors by
Bernd Thaller::
www.bmbf.de/pub/einsteins_unverhofftes_erbe.pdf
page 15, and there is a factualoverview of all
possible orbits on which the electron may be positioned:
www.physnet.uni-hamburg.de/ilp/de/physikVI/2008/Kap1A_Atomphysik08.pdf
Would one simply copy the drawing by Thaller with wooden pieces one could think of the hoops that Grypstra has installed here. Even though these are 9-sided or 12-sided polygons with different diameters which are connected parallel-wise as same-sized pairs they appear round for the eye. In EINSTELLUNGSRAUM they are distributed accidentally. Would someone want to take the task of sorting them on a centerline one would get close to an embodiment that Thaller gave the hydrogen atom. The hoops - with those with the largest diameter in the middle and the smallest each in front and behind - do also get very close to a framework of the shape of a spindle. When I then think of the title of the exhibition "Stromlinie" such a spindle may be substantiated as an object, even though everything that reminds of the smoothness of a streamline is avoided by Grypstra. With that one gets more the impression that the artist wants to withdraw herself from a typical construct of technical or natural-scientific beauty. Her statement: "I build machines that withdraw themselves from economic productivity. |
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Almut Grypstra
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