The Comparative Anatomy of Angels is a series of small, kinetic sculptures with motor-driven string. In each piece, I experiment with different arrangements of string and look for a mechanism, or a behavior, that the material offers. I then amplify those behaviors into small colonies of activity.
UC Davis Today did a profile of my work, including a video about this series:
Details of each work:
The title of the series is borrowed from a farcical scientific paper from 1825. Qfwfq, the title of each numbered piece in the series, is the main character from Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics.
They've raised questions for me about how we perceive lifelike movement, even in a kind of black-and-white line drawing, even with the mechanisms exposed. The scientific criteria for “living things” is a long list of somewhat arbitrary traits. So, determining whether something is alive or not is subjective. If that’s the case, what role does perception play?
Comparative Anatomy of Angels was also featured in the jjmwmnl: UC Davis MFA Thesis Exhibition 2015, with a review by Jamianessa Davis.