Elixir Machine

Elixir Machine resembles a laboratory for examination of our complex relationship we nowadays have with nature and especially with its role in our health and wellbeing. The generative segment of the sculpture transposes the exhibition visitors into the virtual world of seemingly primordial nature. Besides the camera, object a is attached to the sculpture construction. The object purifies the previously prepared liquid substance, which is dispersed into the air of the exhibition space. The previously prepared substance used here is an alcohol extraction of more than 60 ingredients. A few drops of this substance goes into the distilled water, purified through active charcoal within object a, and is dispersed into the gallery space.

Installation presents numerous health boosting “natural” substances, ranging from everyday herbal teas, minerals, to vitamins. While reading about historical examples of amalgam medications, I was inspired by Theriak and Mithridatium, which are both examples of cumulative and random mixtures of medicaments in the past.

Within each installation of the Sphere 1, there are two conceptual objects, the objects a and B, where a always represents the unattainable, the fleeting other, while B is the representation of us inside the contemporary world of “ecotechnics”. These objects are inspired by the history of anthropomorphization and are, as Sherry Turkle would say, “objects- to-think-with”. Object a represents our striving towards the creation of a synthetic being, while Object B stands for the human being in transition – a robomorphic being, a cyborg-becoming-a-thing.

The future of wellbeing lies in the development of contemporary science and technology, as well as in our readiness to understand them and debate their many elements and implications. We often deal with the Pharmakon, fluctuating between poison and remedy, but also between the notions of clean and dirty, having in mind that the substances in our environment are the pointers of our homeostatic balances.

Virtual world for this sculpture was developed in Unity 3D software. The moment the camera recognises a human shape, it mirrors it within the application. At first, the shape is recognisable by the visitor standing in front of the camera mirroring the visitor’s movements within the projection. At that point, the avatar looks like a loose outline of human shape, defined by the particles resembling herbs. Gradually, the human shape transforms into a mixture of geometric shapes that change form and finally stabilise into a unique shape that is stored in the work’s database. Geometric shapes are generated from the group of ten objects consisting of a random number of cubes, lines, and plates. Positions and rotations are also randomly generated but with some restrictions in terms of the lines being parallel to one another. The order of geometric elements is determined by Bridson's algorithm, which is an approximation of Poisson-disc distribution. Animations of floating elements are based on Perlin noise, a technique developed by Ken Perlin.