CRISPR SCULPTR

CRISPR is a gene-editing tool that enables genomes to be modified by the cutting out or inserting of snippets of DNA. The below installation was created by making and arranging — inserting, editing — hundreds of “visual genes” in the hybrid painting/sculpture. (And more genes to be spliced in over time in later stages…) See bottom for a painting series covering the same ideas, or click HERE for paintings using the idea.

LNDSCP 35x20x12’

CRISPR SCULPTR - This work consists of large paintings distributed (into a sculpture (that is a recombinant installation (that is a function))).

Infinite possiblity. Transformation, evolution, change, ephemerality, beautiful instability, the passage of time, impermanence, shifting perspectives, growth, spontaneity, chance, adaptability, modest/monumental.

In the same way that the 3 billion pieces of information that make up the human body do not explain the individual person or their personality, the gestalt potentials of the installation are bigger than just the volume of its discrete units.

Below are some of the transformations of the work, some of the ways the work can explore many ideas, from migration to viruses, from the antrhopocene to articfial intelligence, from decentralization to weather. Rising as a sea to cover other artworks, migrating as a mass through an institution over weeks, infecting a musueum, distributed throughout an entire building…

Each iteration is to exist as its own unique work, however the work can also be viewed within the context of its past and future versions. (CONT’D)

This is stage one; later stages are to be created in site-specific locations nationally and globally over the next few years, the work accreting to an enormous size.

VORTEX 30′ dia.

Its multivalent presentation modes [SEE IMAGES] enables it to explore many ideas. The sculpture is a mutable metaphor, a hackable technology, a language or a system or an open function for divining insight. Abstract ideas experienced concretely via abstract form. For example to viscerally explore concepts of borders, colonialism, and migration in an institutional setting, a large sculptural emplacement of massed Xes could be shifted a few feet further along each day, so that over months the sculpture migrates across the entire venue, passing through and even over other exhibitions; the artwork becomes a diaspora, and its movement a negotiation — will the museum, curators, or other artists allow their territory, ideology, or work to be trespassed, inhabited, obscured, barricaded, enlivened? And/or as live data: wind currents…

MOUNTN 8 x 1 x .5
A crystalline mound (see below).

CURRNT 30 x 12′

…And/or genetically modified, CRISPR’d: components or sequences spliced in and out creating entirely new forms (some beautiful some a disaster). And/or decentralized: like the web, like bitcoin, like the internet of things, the single huge sculpture could be ‘decentralized’, the work separated into discrete nodes distributed across various pavilions. And/or as virus, biological or digital: a single X on day one, then two, four, exponentially up to thousands by show’s end to completely fill up the room or venue. And/or as Anthropocene: the installation’s additive layers rising to cover other works. And/or fun: as video game or treasure hunt, hidden sections to be discovered distributed throughout the museum; as music, or meme, remixed. It is both a wave (possible states) and a particle (current ‘collapsed’ reality)…

Over time this artwork is to accrete into a single huge installation made from many sculptures made from sculptures made of site-specific paintings done around the world.

DETRITS 10 x 12 x 5′

The key idea of this work is transformation and change. It will change in scale over months to years, growing immensely as many new component Xes (each made from paintings for separate sub-sculptures done later in different places) are continuously created and added to the aggregate work. It will change location, as it is meant to be nomadic and travel for exhibiting (each additive sub-sculpture packable into a suitcase, storable on a shelf). It will change in content, as new terroir-data paintings get added — from Newfoundland, Shenzhen, Scotland, Dubai etc — to create a local-but-global 3D megamosaic. Importantly, the artwork will also change radically and infinitely in shape as it is shown over days, weeks, years, as its extant component parts get arranged in new ways to alter its gestalt form; more importantly, it will change in meaning as it physically explores and expresses many concepts. It is about being able to simultaneously contain or potentially express multiple ideas, some contrasting (it is both local and global; it is about its past versions and future possibilities…)

MIGRATION. The installation moves, over weeks, through a group exhibition or institutional collection, around and through other works, inexorable. This iteration only exists in relation to other works. It frames, enhances, barricades other work.Seen in terms of migration, the work creates treaties, negotiations, agreement, communication, compromises, solutions re: borders, territory, ideology, identity, perception, politics with the other artworks/artists, and the institution. Would an artist agree to have the context of their work changed? Their work temporarily inhabited? Invaded? Occupied? Would the institution allow the work to block areas, or channel people certain directions?

ANTHROPOCENE: Artwork as tsunami, ice age, desert dunes, mud slide, rising sea level. Art as anthropocene. Sculptures submerged by an encroaching installation (an iteration of CRISPR SCULPTR installation done Banff Centre)

from other notes: My work adopts the techniques used by CRISPR (genome editing by slicing/inserting) and concepts from the digital realm (discrete units to compose larger things). This enables my sculptures to be recombinant and therefore able to explore many ideas through metaphorical forms. Each work starts out as a site-specific painting (2D), which is sliced into parts, then assembled volumetrically (3D), and rearrangeable over time (4D). The proposed work for the After Pedestal show explores the idea of decentralization as applied to a sculpture— a single cohesive painting-sculpture, specific to an origin point and time, but which exists across geographical distances as nodes (like the internet, or Bitcoin.) The work proposed for the Sculpture Center is a small node (about 60 units of ‘Xes’, each one 9x9x6 inches) of a much larger work (300 units) completed at a residency fall 2017 at the Banff Centre. This will be the first manifestation of the cross-border intent of the work. Perhaps most interesting though, is the ‘post-pedestal’ expression of the sculpture. The node can be recombined into different forms in the same manner as the larger work to which it belongs. For the AP it can have one or (ideally) a few iterations over the duration exhibition. For example, the work could be installed as: 1) MOUND - on the floor, which is to migrate across the space over days/weeks, through and around the territory of the other works, its component pieces easily shifted a few feet each day, this iteration reading as a living organism, colonizer, refugee… 2) VIRUS - Component pieces get added to the space over time (1, 2, 4, 8 etc) the pieces distributed widely around the space (floor, pedestal, windowsill etc) ‘infecting’ the space 3) ARRAY - a curvilinear line of Xes stretching between the rooms, as guide path connecting pedestals — or as visual barricade 4) COLUMN - on the floor, the X-components collapsed to their 2 flat pieces (each 12” x 6” x 3/4”) highlighting the work as painting NOTES: 1) the work is done on provisional material (very thick recycled cardboard) that has been sized with matte medium and layers of gesso to be archival 2) It is designed to be globally nomadic and so easy to ship, lightweight and flat-packable 3) The node for AP is part of a larger work which is itself part of an even larger intended work — more stages of it are to be made around the world and added to the piece, so the meta-sculpture will change in scale, shape, content and aura over time, as a work that is both local and global, a painting, a collage, a sculpture, an installation, a metaphor and a narrative. Key to the work is that each piece — piece, X componen

MIGRAT - moves through the institution around sculptures (floor), paintings (walls) over weeks (borders, colonization)
RISNG - rises from ground level in higher and higher levels even covering other works in the exhibition (anthropocene)
VIRUS - infects the exhibition / institution over days, with more and more X components added
HURRICN - huge outdoor iteration, arranged as hurricane spiral; wind allowed to randomly affect the work (weather, chance)
REFLECTR - silver’d X painted components to reflect surroundings and each other X. On mirrored mylar, or snow outdoors

CRISPR PUBLIC ART / LARGE SCALE ART: the works on this page are an early stage. Larger versions of the individual units (i.e. 36” in. in height) for huge scale installations and public artworks (temporary or permanent) in various materials (metal, cement, etc) are planned. Works can be ground or land based, or affixed to a wall (thousands of small scale units, or hundreds of larger scale units.)

LNDSCP

VORTX

MOUND