Pentatonic Orrery & A Circle of Friends Discuss James Clerk Maxwell.

Artist: Mark Esper

Portfolio Online: Catalogue of Past Projects

June 1- July 21, 2002

Mark Esper debuts at Dam, Stuhltrager.

Esper's ascending interactive sculpture, Pentatonic Orrery, is appeasing ears and drawing praise. Pentatonic Orrery sprawls from it's base on the floor upward toward the ceiling, reaches out tentacles of wires, flashes interior lights, and bangs hammers on several cords, chiming octaves of music composed in part, by the movements of the viewers in the room.

The Pentatonic Orrery sculpture, itself a creation, is inherently a creator of self organized music. The music is produced through a perpetual, aggressive balancing act between a circuit that drives the notes to eventually play in phase and the movement of people in the room that drives the notes out of phase. Sensors in the room trigger the cord located nearest the visitor to be played as the person navigates through the exhibit. In this way, everyone that attends the exhibit is an active participant, and effects the music created by the sculpture as they interrupt patterns and define new ones. The clockwork Orreries of previous centuries made visible the movements of the planet about the Sun.

The project, A Circle of Friends Discuss James Clerk Maxwell is an exploration in self organizing form using magnetism, the use of light, and the transfer of kinetic energy between discrete masses. It is also a homage to Mr. Maxwell who made discoveries in the nineteenth century that made most of the technology since then possible. Maxwell is the father of electromagnetism, described the propagation of light through space as a form of electromagnetism radiation, and he is the father of thermodynamics. In the piece, a round gathering of miniature casted and magnetized heads attract and repeal each other, creating self generated waves. In time, left to their own impulses, the magnetized heads sway together into a unified pattern. This piece really swings!