Philip Beesley
Member 1615
13 entries
7695 views

 RSS
Philip Beesley (M, 53)
Toronto, CA
Immortal since Feb 24, 2008
Uplinks: 0, Generation 2
www.philipbeesley.com
  • Affiliated
    •  /  
  • Invited
    •  /  
  • Descended
    • Recently commented on
    From Philip Beesley
    Endothelium- power cell...
    Now playing SpaceCollective
    Where forward thinking terrestrials share ideas and information about the state of the species, their planet and the universe, living the lives of science fiction. Introduction
    Featuring Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, based on an idea by Kees Boeke.
    From Philip Beesley's personal cargo

    Endothelium- power cell connections

    Sat, May 23, 2009  Permanent link

      RSS for this post
    3 comments
      Promote
      
      Add to favorites
    Create synapse
     
    Comments:


    gamma     Tue, May 26, 2009  Permanent link
    Bull testicles farm outside of Austin, TX. Partially for export to Denmark.
    Steven Beckmann     Wed, May 27, 2009  Permanent link
    very well framed, looks like a H.R. Gieger installation...is there some science behind these images you can give us?
    Philip Beesley     Wed, May 27, 2009  Permanent link
    Steven- here's some text that describes the system—this description claims functions
    as if they are resolved, with the caveat that the installed work is a sketch prototype.
    -Philip

    Endothelium at UCLA Broad Art Center/California Nanotechnology Sciences Institute/ArtSci Centre, curated by Stefanie Adcock at Body Art Disease symposium November 2008, with Hayley Isaacs

    Endothelium is an automated geotextile, a lightweight sculptural field housing arrays of organic batteries housed within a lattice system that might reinforce new growth. The sculpture works as an ʽearth surface machineʼ that burrows slowly into the ground and sends out extremely light space-filling lattice material as a growth-supporting matrix. The system employs a dense series of very thin whiskers and vibrating burrowing leg mechanisms, and supports low-power miniature lights, pulsing and shifting in slight increments.Within this distributed matrix, microbial growth is fostered by enriched seed-patches housed within nest-like forms sheltered beneath main lattice units.

    The life of the organic system shifts and erode during the exhibition. Three main component types including main filter-packs, supporting whisker-anchor units, and bladder cells are arranged in a tripod field with clusters of specialized units making a repeating hexagonal array. Weak electrical charges are generated by copper and aluminum electrodes immersed in vinegar within latex bladders within these units. Repeating clusters of bladders stand within the field of tripods. The continuous support-skeleton is composed of minimal-mass bamboo compression struts arranged as a primitive space-truss, tied in digitally fabricated triangular joints and stabilized by a web of thread and cable tension members. The cell wiring is arranged in series, feeding into miniature electronic circuits that gather the weak currents and emit pulses of power when sufficient strength accumulates.

    The power activates small lights and motors fitted into the central filter pack units. These central elements act as local centres within the repeating fabric, attempting to concentrate power and focus stable points within the fragile surroundings. The light wire tripod structure of these pack units are fitted with burrowing feet containing hooked harpoon barbs, and are powered by a pivoting lever system that amplifies extremely small amounts of vibration in order to form coherent side-to-side motions. Invasive functions are achieved by tiny increments of force over long periods of time. A miniature motor, similar to those used within cell-phone vibrators assemblies, is fitted on a pivoting stalk that amplifiesthe motions on each foot assembly. Rows of spring-loaded space-filling filter packs held by dissolvable paper clasps are carried within these central skeletal units. Tightly folded masses of cellulose tissue paper are cut in a fine lattice array that promotes maximum expansion while maintaining threads of continuous webwork in their foam-like expanded form. This latticework surrounds a core unit suspended at the lower centre of the filter unit, composed of yeast granules housed within a gel capsule and sheltered within an acetate nest meshwork that would form a scaffold for expanded initial stages of growth. Moisture is collected through capillary tubes and concentrated within a small central bladder for injection into the yeast capsule. Salt-filled bladders acting as collecting receptacles for this moisture are suspended in outlying cantilevered positions, connected by wicking that leads out into the surrounding soil.

    Anchor units are arranged around the periphery of clustered filter and bladder units, lending support by ties radiating out from their tripod caps that attach to each neighbouring tripod on their periphery. The anchor units contail tensile ties and are stabilized by embedded miniature ground anchors. These anchors are detailed similar to the active powered feet within the central filter pack tripods, but lack motor actuation. Substituting for this active system, a passive system of elongated bamboo whiskers fitted with counterweights is mounted on anchor unit legs. The whiskers collect force from air movements and translate this into additional burrowing motions.

    The project is composed of first-generation custom components, self-manufactured. It functions by means of partial gestures that lead toward robust system implementation. The development of sculpture may be understood as acting in the tradition of the marginalized mid-century American medical doctor Wilhelm Reich, who said "all plasmatic matter perceives, with or without sensory nerves. The amoeba has no sensory or motor nerves, and still it perceives. Each organ has its own mode of expression, its own specific language, so to speak. Each organ answers to irritation in its own specific way: the heart with change in heart beat, the glad with secretion, the eye with visual impressions and the ear with sound impressions. The specific expressive language of an organ belongs to the organ and is not a function of any ʽcenter in the nervous systemʼ...milliards of organisms functioned for countless thousands of years before there was a brain. The terror of the total convulsion, of involuntary movement and spontaneous excitation is joined to the splitting up of organs and organ sensations. This terror is the real stumbling block..."
    Wilhelm Reich, ʽOrgonomic Functionalismʼ,
    in Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy, 1960
    (Farrar, Straus and Giraux, 1961)

     
          Cancel