With the
Light Vehicle in 1968, I bit off more than I could
chew by adding electricity to my palette. The
year-long disaster of that experience convinced me that
until I learned more electronics, I needed to attempt less
ambitious projects. Also, the abrupt random wanderings
of the Light Vehicle hipped me that movement had its own
aesthetic rules. Chastened, I embarked on a systematic
investigation of limited kinetic relationships. I
further resolved to keep the electronics simple. Over
the next two years, the resultant studies created 20 related
artworks called Wheels
and Pendulums. These "studies" involved
interactions of oscillating rods (pendulums and rotating
circles (wheels). Various parameters - weights,
counter-weights, fulcrums, radial attachments, diameters and
spring tensions were adjusted until the overall behavior of
the particular group became non-repeating and
unpredictable. Lacking storage space, I reluctantly
destroyed most of them. The studies culminated in
Double Loop Feedback Tower (1972), an award-winner exhibited
at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The next 4 years
were filled with various commissioned excursions into the
use of electronics to sense physical events and create
movements, sounds and illuminations. At the
beginning of the six year expedition into this new
territory, I hid the electrical components in boxes or
obscurely embedded behind physical elements of the work such
as panels or dense walls of welded wires. But
gradually, with increased use of integrated circuits, the
beauty of the electronic parts became apparent.
Printed circuit board stock itself became available in more colors than green. Imagery in other colors can be silk-screened onto it. The patterns of conductive electronic pathways can be drawn freehand with pen and ink. Artistic incorporation of the electronics became irresistible until finally they comprised the main visuals of the mirror-backed multiple, Song For Luke. Song For Luke (1976) *edition of 15 and counting
Photo-resistive
cells, two round red buttons, resemble breasts of an
ancient fertility goddess. The square of sixty-four
LEDs veiled by a pane of red acrylic and surmounted by
three coronal knobs may reference the Christian Virgin
Mother whose portrait St.Luke was alleged to have
painted. The silvery conductive paths of the
integrated circuits, transistors and resistors form a
decorative tracery. That the
function of the circuitry - Opposing
light/dark sensors drive a 16 bucket brigade of logic
states to animate a block of 64 LEDs - can
be imbued
with symbolic meaning.
*edition of 15 and counting Oriental Landscape (1979) |
Oriental Landscape, Time's Flower and Moon Bark are three artworks made in the late 1970s that use a 36 bit binary counter to animate 144 lights in a mandala. In Time's Flower and Oriental Landscape the counter advances as it counts oscillations of its light sensing circuit. More info on Oriental Landscape |
Time's Flower (1977) |
As ambient light increases, the frequency of the oscillations does also. The circuit's frequency ranges between 2 (complete dark) and 16 per second (sunlight). If the artwork is allowed to run uninterrupted counting at an average rate of 8 per second, Its mandala will display 68,719,476,735 different symmetrical patterns in about 233 1/2 years before it will start over. If power to the artwork is interrupted, it starts over. |