The Stream of Life
Aluminum, Glass, Mineral Oil, Titanium Dioxide, Electrical Devices
100 x 100 x 67 in.
Desire is no longer expressed through embodied contact but through the mediation of machines and screens. The Stream of Life explores this mutation—how desire shifts from the "fleshy intensity" of touch to the "semiotic intensity" of interfaces, becoming captured in repetitive cycles that shape our subjectivity.
The installation consists of seven suspended panels, controlled by stepper motors, that stir a mixture of mineral oil and titanium dioxide. The rhythm of their movement mimics breath, while projected images of microscopic nerve cells animate the surface. The work occupies an ambiguous threshold between the mechanical and the organic—neither clearly artificial nor alive.
The Stream of Life asks what happens when the fluidity we associate with life becomes indistinguishable from mechanical process—when water is no longer simply water, but a substitute, a metaphor, a system.
Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing. (Gibran 70)
Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.
Click to Thesis Book for concept and theory
Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.
Click to Thesis Book for concept and theory