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Ich wünsche mit Personen in Verbindung kommen, die dieselbe künstlerische Interesse wie ich haben. Deshalb habe ich daran gedacht, den ersten Schritt zu machen, und regelmäßig über meine letzte Arbeitsvorgänge zu berichten.
Started:
last update: May 14, 2004
 Finished:
Feb 24, 2004 : "The Tree of Science & Technology" - "The Cobra" - Wooden tree-shaped frame covered with keyboard pieces, cobra snake with collage of computer printed circuits (110 x 75)
 
 
The idea


 

Initially I just wanted to make a snake decorated with printed circuits in some patterns of different colours, dark brown, dark green, yellow, whatever. The head and some other parts could also be covered with nibs. I bought some 600 nibs (75€!) at the flee market in Paris two weeks ago. Finally I could make use of the 1,000 of small crews which I also found in Paris visiting a dozen of Computer shops (all run by chinese) where I was asking whether they could give me a small bag of screws they had no use for. They were all friendly and helpful - only one asked for 1 €.
Then thought of a snake climbing a tree.
Then that the snake would try to reach an egg in a nest - but a large egg like that of turkey or goose, and a nest made of multi coloured wires from computer power sets.

The tree should be geometrical, made of wood beams and boards, it should have 3 major trunk branches.

Where am I going? What's the meaning of all that?

I thought that simply turning the snake's head looking away from the nest would make it look like defending it rather than trying to get at it as a predator.
The meaning would be all different, opposite!

I do not know yet what exactly I want to do - I just like the allegoric symbols represented by the tree, the snake, the nest and the egg.
The egg could be closed with a light inside or open with nothing or something coming out of it. Well that's where execution brings about the final design and not just follows it. I use to say in business
'Execution as strategy'.
Execution

The tree should be covered with keyboards pieces, some white, some black, like the bark of a birch tree. It is a nice geometry. I have several computer keyboards from a friend in Siena who has a computer business. He also gave me an old mechanical Olivetti typewriter and when I looked at the cup shape of the font bars basket, the idea came to use it as the nest, surrounded by the multicoloured wiring.
The egg could close with a light inside or broken open with nothing or something coming out of it. But what?

What's the name of the piece, its meaning, its story?
Execution shall tell me as I keep working, experimenting and thinking about it.

The wood was painted white as the base for applying the black and white keyboard keysets.

I placed a rubber water hose curling around the tree structure to decide on how it should be placed for the best effect.

Trying the typewriter as nest. I removed everything except the keyboard and the fontbars basket. Put a few eggs in the basket.

Some interesting allegoric theme is slowly emerging:

I should have the snake as the guardian of the nest (head away from the nest toward the spectator . A large goose's egg should be in the center of the nest and illuminated from the inside so that it radiatess light.
The title could be something like:

"Protecting science & technology"

March 9

The tree was entirely covered with pieces of computer keyboards.
Seven keyboards were necessary for the whole tree.
I placed a goose's egg (large white egg) in the mechanical typewriter basket on top of 3 chicken's eggs.

 
Constructing the snake

March 12
The snake had to be flexible (to wind around the tree) and with some non elastic rigidity (to remain in place). The rubber hose I use in the photos above was not flexible enough and much too elastic. Finally i chose to work with a spiral electric cord with an iron wire inside and covered with synthetic foam maintained in place by several rounds of painter's tape.
The iron wire gives rigidity without taking away the flexibility of the spiral cord. Various experiments confirmed that choice of material

The head and cap of the snake (a cobra) was made around a structure of iron wire using paper tape, foam, and rubber sheets. The head itself was finished with papier-maché. The eyes were marked with tacs.

To get some idea of the final aspect I painted the snake with yellow, brown-red and balck segments. I sprayed the head and cap with gold paint.

I placed a small electric lamp (battery powered) inside the goose's egg.
A mini-switch was place on the side of the tree to turn the lamp on and off.

Decorating the snake

March 15
The head and cap of the snake were decorated with mosaic pieces of printed circuits of various colours.

 The eyes were made of white tacks, with a black pupil, and covered with transparent brilliant resin.
Change of plan

April 25
While travelling in France and Germany, and thinking about this project, far from my studio, I came to the conclusion that I should make 2 distinct pieces out of it:

- the cobra snake
- the tree of science and technology

One of the reasons for this change of mind was the difficulty of decorating the snake when swirling around the tree. It would take too much time to do. The other reason was purely commercial, mercantile. The cobra is probably much easier to sell alone.

For the body of the cobra, I decided to use a base form made out of cupper pipe as the one used for water lines in a house plumbing system. It is flexible enough to be adequately formed, and can then be made totally stiff by pouring liquid cement in it.

 

 

May 14
Today I formed the cupper pipe and then poured some liquid polyester mixture into it to harden. The head was put in place in the top of the pipe before the polyester got to solidify.
The speed of the solidifying process depends on the proportion of the chemical hardening powder that is mixed with the liquid polyester.

The pipe was covered with foamy isolating tubes used in house piping works. Then it was sprayed gold as a base for the coming decoration with printed circuits pieces, like for the head.

It is scary enough as it is in that intermediate stage!
Click it to enlarge.

I am working in parallel to the 'Tree of science and technology' which has now lost its snake and needs some colourful added pieces. I think of DNA and proteins spirals. Started to spray the spiral electric cords which I had used for the first version of the snake (see above) when it was supposed to be climbing on the tree. They will make colourful DNA and protein spirals.

'The Tree of Science & technology'

'The Cobra'