low affinity
Knotted like a macramé hanger the USB cables enclose and lift the paraffin sphere. The power flows through the whole structure and lights LEDs cast inside the paraffin sculptures, which show reliefs of hands and knotted or woven structures.
USB cables are the only cables that allow information as well as power to flow in both directions. But while the power always travels the information gets lost at a certain cable length – the longer the cable, the higher the entropy.
Knot making is an ancient craft to built structures, form containers, make clothes and create all different kinds of decorative objects. Since a couple of years macramé seems to have a revival – my fellow millenials learn it on YouTube.
Knot making has also been used as a mnemonic technique to remember things or even pass on history, for example the knot tied in a handkerchief, cat‘s cradle games, and tapestry, which are connecting knot making, information, and also power in a political sense.
Knotting together usb cables literally and conceptually creates nets or structures of information and power, which form connections and actually power, contain and hold up the paraffin sculptures in my work.
In our times information is the key concept drawn upon to frame and explain the world, life and things – analogous maybe to the ether in earlier times. The ether, a hypothetical substance which was sometimes imagined to be a liquid, sometimes a solid was believed to fill the universe – how else was light supposed to travel in space?
The liquid and solid states of aggregation of paraffin wax lie close together. Paraffin wax is a translucent material, which melts at 40C (104F) and is often used to make candles. Holding shapes and form wax is able to carry information, might it be as a fingerprint, a seal or even a sculpture. Because of its ability to change its state it not only references ancient concepts of the ether but it also reminds us of Descartes wax argument that shows that there is an act of judgment involved in our perception.