THE INFINITY COUNTER
The Infinity Counter aka The Machine that Counts Nothing, to Infinity.
The infinity counter is a machine that counts nothing from zero til infinity. Thus gives a purpose on doing nothing and makes nothing count for something.
The viewer participates by activating the mechanism by pressing the switch.
The installation comes to life. Lights turn on, liquids run through the tubes and the meter starts counting. The action is imprinted there.
Technology has shaped a fast and ever-changing digital landscape that affects and sets new norms on life. Whether it defines our entertainment, our relationships, our ways of working while generally dealing with information, it puts us into a new numeral modality defined by “counting”. Our devices record our performance when we work or while doing sports. Our favorite apps — to which we are so much committed — count our friends, our talent and social acceptance through likes and emojis while residing in such a small touch screen apparatus which we keep in our pockets, never letting our minds adrift.
In a way, humans have turned partially into machines.
The Infinity Counter is an apparatus that embraces “doing nothing”. Realizing that Nothing Moments deserve our attention, the machine takes on that awkward Nothing Moments while creating a space for it, inviting people to live through it, instead of marginalizing it. At the same time, it triggers its user to be productive while doing nothing. A speedometer counts this “nothing time” suggesting a surreal law of physics between “nothing time” and speed. Intentionally a low tech machine, with an organic form, aims to sympathize with humans while all actions taking place produce Nothing. In a high tech society this is a speculative aid machine that helps us unplug.
The machine consists of mechanical car parts and consumables (antifreezant) obtaining an organic form and compose a simulation of vital functions mechanism.
For Renault Recycled Parts Project, Athens 2018
Plastic and metal car scraps, speed indicator, anti freeze liquid in plastic tubes, light, liquid pump,