Cosmological Proposition Generator. Collaboration with spurse. Exhibited as part of “The Fat of the Land” exhibition at Grand Arts in Kansas City, Missouri. Summer 2007.
How do we understand the present? What new provisional conceptual articulations of the world are necessary today? As we move through our lived experiences we utilize various complex conceptual systems that set up and shape a particular form of world. This conceptual world stretches out ahead of us and is not a world that we make as we wish — but we, through our actions, are part of its continuous co-construction. Updating a rather archaic word we refer to this immanent map as a cosmology.
This project asked people to participate by filling out a questionnaire. This questionnaire could be filled out by answering a set of questions, writing ones own text, by making a diagram or an other form of drawing, or by phoning us and leaving a message (all of the information is on the questionnaire form). As we received the forms we collated and synthesized the cosmologies on a weekly basis and sent everyone who participated a weekly three-dimensional representation of the synthesis. Ideally we hope that people participate on a regular basis — adding to the developing systems over the duration of the research period (seven weeks).
The Synthesized diagrams had a second life: we used them to compose a large apparatus inspired by the Medieval Volvelle, a type of analog computer. This Table was part of an exhibit at Grand Arts in Kansas City (MO) called “From the Fat of the Land”.
