Trace II
Trace II is a sculptural device that alludes to scientific discoveries and the experimental apparatus of science. It is essentially
a mechanical computer that draws its analogue programme from a revolving plaster head. The carefully balanced mechanism slowly measures the topography of a cast human head and translates its undulations onto a rotating cylindrical surface. The result is an evolving topographical diagrammatic depiction that is truly unique every time.
The work alludes to our notions of self and how through technology humans have found numerous visual representations for the individual. Medical advances have brought about well-recognised depictions such as DNA profiling, retina scans, MRI scans and 3d scanning. Trace II investigates the process behind the image making, and reconnects the viewer in a tangible way, with the process behind these fantastical images. Trace II is not only a drawing machine that draws emphasis on the human condition but also questions our ability to understand the ever increasing advances in technology around us. Trace II, uses
the more visually transparent and tangible technology of the past – more likened to the nature of the fingerprint – to allude
to technology of the present. In this respect Trace II attains a timeless characteristic, where the alienating nature of today’s technology is contradicted. Today so much of our technology comes through a screen from a complex array of codes and programmes that only a few can understand and even then it can be a less than fulfilling visual experience. This ‘technological alienation’ can often leave the viewer detached from the lengthy creative processes that lie behind the screen, constituting so much of a focus for digital artists today.
Trace II is a generative work where the artist’s head becomes the code for a complex mechanical algorithm. The plaster head is the ‘source code’ for the ‘Da Vinci’ – like contraption that literally feels the undulations of the human head and converts these features into a spiralling topographical map of the 3-dimensional object.
The structure of Trace II is open and the workings are transparent so the viewer is free to discover the process visually. The mechanism alludes to our advancing technology whilst it looks back in time, when technology was less alienating and more physical.
Trace II challenges a number of issues related to authorship of artwork: is it the product, the machine or the performance? Can or should all these be viewed independently? What are the implications of artworks being created in the artist’s absence? Is the drawing mechanism an autonomous machine that churns out artwork or is it a precise instrument or tool that the artist has control over, thereby maintaining the artist’s status as a decision maker?
Trace II reveals hidden patterns from natural forces that our surrounding world provides us with. The piece makes traces of these forces over hours and presents us with an event that is slowly unfolding in time, into an ‘act of creation’ where process, machine and product are one.