Birth and death are only a rewind button away. This is a world where meaning is found in a videotape. That videotape can be both rewound and fast-forwarded, endlessly replaying the best events again and again. Will the physical world eventually be subject to the same rules?
This sculpture is made possible by a system of armatures similar to those one might find within the prehistoric animal exhibits in a natural history museum. They differ in that they are mechanically driven and allow for varying positions of the broken pieces of marble. A system of electronic drives, stepper motors, ballscrews, linear shafts and computer software similar to what one might find in a high-tech assembly plant provides the movement.
Both the irony and beauty of this sculpture ultimately lie in the question, “Has this sculpture successfully cheated death, entropy and time?” We have become accustomed to the ability to pause the video, finding a frame just before the moment of death or just as we please. In a similar fashion, I wish to make a sculpture that cheats death and time.
Within the world of mathematics it is just as easy to go backwards as it is forward. It is only within human experience that going backwards poses such a problem. We and our perceived physical surroundings are locked into a series of moments where the future is possible and varied but the past is locked and cannot be revisited. Humanity has been slowly eroding the power of time to hide the past. This happened first with language, then with the written word, and now, after progressing through mathematics, to the media, modern technologies and sciences.
We now have tools that allow us to go back and re-understand, reinterpret and re-imagine what has happened. These tools have always been flawed by subjective perspectives and the limits of mechanical reproduction. Nonetheless, we tend to accept these tools and we live in a world where the past is more alive than ever. We have lost our hold on the specific moments in which we live and spend much of our time watching media. Living events are now viewed as if they have already transpired. Will we continue to live increasingly within manifested media worlds? This sculpture takes these ideas to an extreme where the physical object has been separated from media’s power to rewind and is finally subject to the raw linear power of mathematics and science.

Links: http://oppositionart.com

Jonathan Schipper (US) grew up in rural California. He holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute (1996) and an MFA from the Rinehart School of Sculpture (Baltimore, MD. 1998). He attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2001). He now lives and works in Brooklyn NY.