UNKNOWN TECHNOLOGY
CAST IRON, STEEL, BRASS, MDF, PLYWOOD, CAST PLASTIC, ACRYLIC PAINT, LIGHT
69” x 24” x 23”
2013
RELEVANT EXCERPT FROM
"The Compendium of GeoDinic [Natural] History" :
This piece truly is “unknown”, even to your intrepid historian. It has been postulated that gears, in the land of GeoDin, do not always serve the same type of purely mechanical function that they do on Earth. This large and bulky machine appears to have fallen from its perch, where it would’ve been set at an angle aimed at the sky. The Ray-Circle at its base suggests some sort of energy-transfer across distance.
ABOUT THIS PIECE:
Unlike most of the sculptures I make, this piece turned out totally different from how I originally intended. As it happened, my original “plan” was a bit out of my reach at the time (and still is, as it would’ve required thousands of dollars worth of bronze), and was prohibited by timing as well. So, timeline looming, I ended up putting this together on-the-fly and I am happy with the result. The main components are cast iron, and the uprights are forged steel. One of my favorite things about cast metal is that I can carve cracks into the patterns, adding to the sense of age and abandonment. One slight misgiving I have about this piece is the title. The phrase “unknown technology” came from a video game I was playing around the time I made this work and which I found incredibly intriguing. I thought to myself: “I wonder if I will ever make a sculpture interesting enough the deserve that title?”. When I made the drawing for this piece, I though that perhaps it would warrant the title. Maybe it would’ve, but I didn’t make that piece in the end. I kept the title though, because it already felt “attached”. It’s also the case that I don’t know what this machine “did” in GeoDin, so in that way at least the title makes some sense.