Congealing the Paradigm

X Marks the Spot
Finally an article…where the boat doesn’t seem docked at the asylum. Entropy. I wonder, is life and design nothing more than framing empty space?

Novel concept of Bruce Nauman to cast empty space. We need it, we design for it, we work around it, and yet it has no substance. Dealing with that invisible elephant in the middle of the room is always a problem. We place items in space, create items that won’t work without space to move through, or allow other things to work. It is the final ingredient in the recipe, and it won’t work without it. Yet the space has no visible context.

Casting Empty Space -
When I think of casting to reveal a form the image of the plaster casts of the victims made from the ruins of Pompeii comes to mind. Maybe the most surprising casts ever made, these empty cavities revealed the final moments of people dying from the volcanic eruption. Shocking and poignant, but there is nothing left of them but empty space….like the underside of the chair. Yet the person who has long since vanished can be seen like a still photograph.
But, unlike Nauman’s work, without a title you have no idea what his work is, in this case the cast is a revelation of the unknown. You don’t need a title to know what it is once it dries. With these empty tubes or spaces, unless they had plaster poured in them, they would simply have been empty space.

I find it interesting that in casting the footprints of dinosaurs he runs into the conflict if repeated too much; industrial or biological. Is that any different than the plaster cast of a dog from Pompeii that is now repeated over and over? I don’t think I'm going to order one for the family room, but somebody must be. (tried to include picture in document but didn't go - picuture of 20 plaster casts of same dog)

Is life a case of entropy, that we are constantly moving toward change. Filling a space, yet eventually we vanish unless we are cast like the people in Pompeii. But, the only way to make that is to vanish. At least the foot prints in the muck were not of an animal at the moment they were dying.

Again I find my mind saying does casting a hundred fragments in 4 colors and then displaying them appeal to my sense of time well spent? No. But, in 2000 years will people be making casts of decayed items from a dump, and wondering about us like the ancient animals?