Levitating installation, ongoing project
marie-julie Bourgeois 2011-2012
Computer programming : Cyrille Henry
Partner : EnsadLab/DRii, Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Espace Pierre Gilles de Gennes (ESPCI)
The viewer is facing a coin, suspended in the air, about to fall. The coin delicately oscillates between one face and the other. Playing “heads or tails“, that common gesture that helps us decide when a situation requires a difficult choice. A few seconds before if falls, time is stopped, frozen, the levitation of the object allows us to perceive this precious moment of hesitation, the coin is suspended in this very instant of uncertainty. The game will solve the dilemma. The coin will not fall as long as the conditions of the experiment will be retained. By warming itself, the coin will delicately land on one side.
Economy controls our societies, even as it collapses a little bit more everyday, our debts are growing, we are leaving a huge past of players to future generations. Holding on fragile and unstable things, the economy is yet global and powerful. The “OR“ project questions that moment of unbalance in which we live perpetually.
Test realized at the Pierre Gilles de Gennes exhibition space, ESPCI
slowmotion pictures made by Patrick Sainton, CNRS Engineer
