Presentation – Serendipity: Part 3
Statement of Meaning
Experiment 2 – Restore
The problem that emerged from the first experiment was that digitisation only works when the fragments of information are kept in order. Because wood chipping is a deliberate destructive process, there is no order; as they are created, the woodchips are thrown into random chaos.
My second experiment explores whether it is possible to restore some kind order to the woodchip chaos. The desire to restore order was not driven by some an obsessive-compulsive disorder more so an underlying parallel I had drawn between the destructive process of wood chipping and other forms of deliberate destruction to the environment.
From my initial tests, I quickly discovered that woodchips aren’t prone to order. However, I found the process of sorting and resorting in some ways more compelling than the outcome and created a moving image artwork to document it. The work runs for 34 minutes and is somewhat meditative to watch. As each arrangement is complete, it is then rearranged to form the next. The idea being that each arrangement after the first resembles the trunk of a tree. Each of the four arrangements, although organic and temporary, had a sense purpose that I chose to capture and have displayed at actual size alongside the moving image work. These moments in time are unlikely to be repeated. That said, I decided to preserve the final arrangement; however, in some way, I regret that decision as it interrupts the temporary nature of the process and suggests that it is an ultimate solution. The reality is there is no solution. No matter how many times I perform the process with the same handful of woodchips, the arrangements will never be the same, and it certainly won’t restore the destruction.