Roots (2005-06) by Roman Kirschner: A world with a fluid atmosphere in a glass tank. Dark crystals grow trying to make connections. Constellations develop. They generate sound. And after some time they dissolve into clouds…

Roots is a dreamlike screen that follows an old persian image: a bush growing heads. – In a green and brownish fluid iron crystals grow steadily…Bubbles ascend like jellyfish. Branches break off and sink to the dark ground. They start to dissolve and become thick clouds hovering over the scene. Electricity is pulsed through the whole sculpture. It is the key to the constant transformation. Growth changes the flow of the current. The modified flow changes the growth. Software and Hardware leave the next step to the material. The voltages at each wire are put through a resonance filter and thus transformed into sound. The 4/4 pulse results in a sublime rhythm.

The installation is based on the model of a chemical computer by Gordon Pask in the early 1950s. It was open to the environment and it managed to grow to a configuration which was able to distinguish between different frequencies. Roots refers to a time when the big synthesis and simulation of image, sound, thinking and memory was soon to be started. Movie (QT 10,73MB) Part of Nature [of Man].

Roman Kirschner is cofounder, together with Tilman Reiff and Volker Morawe, of the artist collective //////////fur////.