 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
showcase your art to thousands
|
|
|
|
| Mark Esper | |
live and work in Brooklyn, NY |
|
| About the Artist | |
I develop projects involving electronic circuits and mechanical devices. These are my attempts to explore and render the connections between the human condition, that is soul and psyche, and physical reality. My projects tend to dominate the sensed space they occupy. In this way they can be thought of as installations. They are not objects in a room, to be contemplated like a carving or a painting. They often require a dark room, as the work often involves the controlled use of light as part of a feedback loop or triggering medium. Artists and scientists both seek truth, and in doing so, discover new mysteries. Science relies mostly on reductive thinking. Artists live more in the realm of inspiration. I look for the poetry that can be found on the arc between the two. |
|
| Click to enlarge images (if larger image has been loaded) |
|
"Enlightemnent"
2004 |
)
|
| Enlightenment is an interactive installation that manipulates light, creating inverse shadows. It explores several aspects of perception and self-perception. The actual term, Enlightenment, comes from the humanistic and scientific movement that began in the eighteenth century. Also in this work, the idea of personal enlightenment is made physical, a means of contemplation.
Enlightenment presents a situation where a viewer enters a dark room. On one side of the room, a lamp shines invisible infrared light. At the other end of the room, are three sets of three spinning vanes, much like airplane propellers. Made of clear polycarbonate plastic, the vanes are driven by electric motors at a 140 rotations/min. Along the length of each vane at intervals of one inch are set a row of identical electrical circuits. Each circuit includes an infrared sensor and a light emitting diode. When the sensor sees infrared light, the light emitting diode is off. When the infrared light is blocked from the sensor, when it is in shadow, the light emitting diode glows brightly. The front set of vanes has blue diodes, the center set of vanes has red diodes, and farthest one from the viewer has yellow diodes.
As the viewer enters the dark room, in which the vanes are spinning, he/she blocks some of the infra-red light from reaching the vanes, and in doing so, the work lights up, because a shadow is cast on the spinning vanes, revealing the silhouette aspect of the viewer. This shadow is seen as three colors of light against dark rather than as dark against light.
Creating a pun with the term Enlightenment, the work lights up, and literally so does the viewer. The light shadow is seen differently by the one who is casting the shadow than it is seen by anyone else. The person casting the shadow sees it as a cohesive image. Others viewing it see the separate layers of the image, suggesting that we see ourselves in a different way than others see us. So, the idea of personal enlightenment is made physical. A reference can be seen also to Plato’s shadow on the cave wall in his meditation on reality, but in this work, it is a shadow of light. |
|
"Enlightenment" detail |
)
|
"Second Orrery"
Size: 182cm across, 243 - 304 ft. high |
)
|
| The Second Orrery generates a tornado by guiding convection driven air into a spinning motion over a pan of heated water. The air is directed by three baffles arranged at the edge of the pan of heated water. Near the center of the pan, a funnel of warm mist forms just like in a tornado or a water - spout.
The ethereal spiral of gasses, the tornado, is reflected in three other spiral forms that constitute the work. The basic torus (doughnut) form is articulated with a self-enclosed double helix, the same form as DNA. The train track that runs on the outside of the torus is also a self-enclosed spiral. The last spiral form is even less corporal than the tornado in that it isn’t seen. It is felt in time through the cyclical behavior of the piece, through the periodic adjustments in lighting coupled with the repetitive journey of the train, and the appearance and disappearance of the tornado. It is a spiral in time. |
|
"Second Orrery" detail |
)
|
"Second Orrery" detail |
)
|
"Gathered Voices"
2004 |
)
|
| Gathered Voices is an exercise in self-organizing form through the use of coupled oscillators. It will generate a sort of music from a variety of recorded voices.
There is a phenomenon we are all familiar with; we remember the voices of people who are or have been close to us with perfect fidelity. Even if it has been decades since we last heard that person’s voice, the timbre and inflection of that voice is perfectly reproduced in our memories. To some extant, we are our memories. In this way we embody the personalities of even people long gone. These voices can at times form an internal music heard only by the one who remembers.
This is the text that is used in this project;
Voices are heard from where I am most still.
Not as intrusive ghosts to unseat peace,
But come invited as an act of will.
Listen within, old friend’s spirits release!
How true they sound, as if my ears behold
remembered friends as if each one were here.
Their very tone, timbre and cadence fold
into a deeply layered image dear.
Returning echoes paint a landscape felt,
of recalled sounds and texture of the soul.
All them in memory together melt
And cast themselves into my own life’s role.
Gathered voices, some who have gone before
live still, and still speak to my inner core.
There are twenty-four units. Each unit consists of a pendulum assembly, an electromagnet, control circuitry, and a voice chip with a speaker.
Pendulums consist of an eight-inch by five-eighths inch lag bolt at the bottom of an eight-foot long wooden pole a half-inch square. The wooden pole is connected to the horizontal supporting ring with steel wire. At the bottom of the lag bolt is a powerful neodymium magnet.
The electromagnets are about four inches in diameter and seven-eighths an inch thick. They have soft steel cores one and five eighths inch in diameter.
Placed at the top of each electromagnet is a Hall effect device, which is a switch that is activated by the proximity of a magnet. When the pendulum with its magnet swings near the Hall effect device, the device switches two electrical circuits.
One of the circuits that the Hall effect device switches is one that turns on the electromagnet for a brief pulse. A magnetic field is thus generated around the electromagnet. The polarity of the generated magnetic field is the same polarity as that of the magnet at the bottom of the pendulum.
Because like polarity magnetic fields repulse each other, the pendulum is pushed a little by its interaction with the electromagnet, keeping its movement going.
The other circuit that the Hall effect switches is the sound component of the unit. It allows a pre-recorded voice reciting text to play on a speaker for a brief time, about a second.
Each of the twenty-four voice chips has the same text spoken in unison but with a different voice on each chip. There will be understandable continuity in what is heard, but the voices reciting the text will constantly change.
Because the magnets at the bottom of the pendulums are all the same polarity, the pendulums interact with each other because they repulse each other. They will fall in and out of patterns of movement. They are weakly coupled oscillators. In this way, the swinging of the pendulums determines a self-organized music out of the speaking voices.
|
|
"Gathered Voices" detail |
)
|
| Education and biography | |
| Mark Esper has exhibited extensively throughout the US. In a unique collaboration in September 2004, Mark Esper held three simultaneous solo shows at three separate neighboring galleries in Williamsburg prompting... "His work requires the support and attention of larger institutions than the brave independent galleries can provide. Patrons and institutions alike should start paying attention."- W. Powhida, The Brooklyn Rail, Oct.‘04 Since '04 Esper has begun to exhibit internationally w/Artbots in Dublin in '05 and an exhibit in Istanbul in Dec '06. |
|
| Future shows | |
| Nov-Dec '06: "The Weaver", Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery (project room) Jan-Feb '07: "Mark Esper 5", Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery (solo exhibit) |
|
| Website: www.damstuhltrager.com/markesper.htm | |
| IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN CONTACTING THIS ARTIST, CLICK HERE | |
CLICK HERE TO SEND THIS PROFILE TO YOUR FRIENDS |
|
next artist
Copyright 2003-2009 © The Saatchi Gallery : London Contemporary Art Gallery
|
|
SHOWDOWN ARTWORKS GO HEAD-TO-HEAD FOR VISITORS' VOTES... 
CRITS Present your work for comments by other artists STREET ART Photos & Videos of Graffiti, Murals, Perform- -ance, Found Works... |
||
|
|||
|
STUDIO
Where you can make and display art online |
|||
|
|||
|
SAATCHI ONLINE... WHERE ALL ARTISTS CAN SHOW THEIR WORK AND CREATE THEIR OWN PROFILE PAGE |
|||
|
|||
|
SAATCHI ONLINE ART STUDENTS... WHERE STUDENTS CAN SHOW THEIR WORK AND CREATE THEIR OWN NETWORK PAGE |
|||
|
|||
|
SAATCHI ONLINE... WHERE ALL VIDEO ARTISTS CAN SHOW THEIR FILMS AND CREATE THEIR OWN PROFILE PAGE |
|||
|
|||
|
SAATCHI ONLINE... Where all photo- graphers can show their work AND CREATE THEIR OWN PROFILE PAGE |
|||
|
|
|||
|
SAATCHI ONLINE... Where all illust- rators can show their work AND CREATE THEIR OWN PROFILE PAGE |
|||
|
|
|||
| saatchi online... chat Live to other people who like art |
|||
|
|||
| saatchi online... Forum for debates on art online |
|||
|
|||
| saatchi online... meet other people who like art |
|||
|
|||
| art
and music magazine online |
|||
|
|||
|
|||
