Ellipsis

Typically doors are viewed as human inventions. However they precede and transcend the human world. Not only do they appear in the natural world, amongst animals and insects, but they are also found in the physical world of the atmosphere. It is the interrelationship between their human and non-human occurrence that is the focus of Ellipsis 1.0. The term _Firewall _characterises one function of a door, namely its immunological qualities, keeping danger at bay while protecting the contents. It explores this through an imaginary descent from heights of the atmosphere through a layer of doors down to ground level.

Ellipsis explores the concept of doors using the image of water vapour as a door, doors that envelope and nurture the planet. It utilises never before seen processed satellite data from 33,000kms above sea level. It is an adaptation of Descartes’s Meditation I of 1641.

Projected onto a floor based screen 3m in diameter, viewers are able to scale a small ladder to look down on a mass of swirling and complex currents that constitute this multi-substance phenomenon. It uses a three-month period of satellite data, January to March, of 2011.

Ellipsis is inspired by the Meditation on First Philosophy of 1641, by René Descartes. It uses the Meditation as a way of questioning the concept of perception as a human attribute. It meditates on the water vapour enveloping the Earth as a type of inorganic ‘perception’, a system that actively sees and shapes the world. It utilises rarely seen single frame satellite data, captured from 33,000kms above sea level, in the three-month period of January to March 2011, during Cyclone Yasi that devastated the North-Eastern Australian coast. Converting this data into a video stream projected across the floor, it reveals a mass of turbulent currents that constitute the vast atmospheric rivers that sense, sustain and refashion life. It is installed as an architectural site specific installation in the burnt out section of the 1740 Savoy cavalry headquarters in the centre of Turin.