Mark Esper

Materials: Plastic five gallon buckets, electrical circuits, solenoids, lamps

The imagery for this piece comes from a dream. In previous mind-sets, I made a series of paintings and drawings on the subject. The mood persists, but the form language has changed. The new form language involves a self- organizing process experienced in time. Its form is of several voices that become one voice and then become disorganized again in a cyclical but never repeating way. This process is performed on an electro- mechanical device that looks as though it could be a living thing or an island.

Fourth Orrery has three main components: two buckets that sit on the floor are the drum and its resonator. Suspended above the drum are the main circuits. The top bucket contains lamps, their transformers, and switching circuits.

The drum can be read as a metaphor for the body, manifesting various rhythms processes and energies. The main circuits are a metaphor for the mind and its powers, while the flashing lights refer to activated thoughts in the mind.

Technically, Fourth  Orrery is twelve coupled oscillators. Light is the coupling medium. There are twelve metronome like circuits that beat at slightly different speeds. Each circuit is connected to one of the twelve drumsticks, and also to one of the twelve lamps. Each time a circuit beats, its associated drumstick and lamp operate. One of the components of each circuit is a light sensitive CDS cell. The circuit is sensitive to light only in the last fraction of a second before it beats. If a circuit "sees" the light made by another circuit in that brief time, it's beat is shortened.  What happens is that the beating starts out in a scrambled order. Soon, there are clumps of beats. Eventually, the clumps merge and all the drums and lamps are beating in unison. The process takes between a half-minute and six minutes for this to happen.

As soon as all twelve circuits beat in unison, this event is recognized by another circuit that controls what happens for the next minute and a half. The lights and the drums beat in unison for seven or eight times. Then, the lights stop coming on, though the beating of the drums continues. The beating soon becomes disorganized because the organizing signal of the light is no longer present.

In order that the beating not become disorganized in the same pattern at each cycle, one two or three red LEDs shine on some of the CDS cells for random lengths of time. This adds to the unpredictability of the Fourth Orrery's behavior. 
After the lights have been out for seventy seconds, and the beating has become scrambled, the lights are allowed to again flash along with the beating circuits, and the cycle begins again.

I use the electrical elements of the work to create the physical image. The largest of these are the light sensing elements, the cadmium disulfide, or CDS cells. They resist electrical current less as the intensity of light increases on its flat surface. With long stiff wires soldered to its two terminals, and twisted together, a CDS cell resembles a mushroom, or perhaps a tall tree with foliage at the top. So, in constructing the circuits, I kept in mind these two similar images. All of the electrical elements are functional. None are just for show.
The shape of the main circuit board is a meander, in that it is like a cell, or an amoeba. It also takes on the shape of an island with its irregular shoreline. The multi-pinned, black, rectangular integrated circuits, and the pots, or adjustable resistors, in their regularity, suggest to me dwellings hunkered close to the land. They could also be other sorts of parasites. The smaller resistors and capacitors and their connecting wires form an underbrush to this forest, or perhaps the tendrils of a fungal community, or the memes of like minded persons.

Partially hidden beneath all this is that which drives these easily observed connections. The electromotive force drives the growth of fungus, the propagation of forests through photosynthesis, and the signals between neurons. So, placed under the main circuits are the main transformers and voltage regulators.