glass, table, mirror, motor, motion detector, 2002/2003

‘Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.’1 All things in nature vibrate. Like the experience of an earthquake, the moment of vibration can be nerve-racking but also thrilling in terms of expecting something to happen.

I set various shapes of blown glass pieces on a small table. Some of them were filled halfway with water. A sheet of mirror was under the glass pieces in order to magnify the reflection of water. Tables started to tremble when a viewer approached. It was a subtle movement, hard to notice visually. Only clinking sounds and the reflection of shaking water on the wall indicated the presence of vibration.

A train passing in the distance, the beginning of an earthquake, and the clinking of champaign glasses at the party: those are the images I tried to evoke from the vibration. With the sudden encounter of the sensation, I hoped to create a feeling of anxiety in the beginning and help it evolve into a feeling of enchantment once they found the source of the action.

In the second version of the work, I sorted the glass pieces by shape and put them on three different tables so that each table would make slightly different sounds when it vibrated. Each table was hooked to a motion sensor designed to be activated from other directions. When activated, it seemed more like the pieces were “chatting” to each other.

1 The Kybalion