Liquid Loom is an optokinetic arrangement in which Cere Davis builds a bridge between digital art and material culture. At its heart are vintage backlit LCD glass panes stripped of all electronic controls and revealed as bare liquid filled glass suspended within a translucent frame, installed at eye level against a wall. To our customary notion of electronics, this visual ensemble appears defunct, and lifeless, lacking any conventional means of control or power. But the assembly awakens seemingly dormant life as luminous threads under the influence of electrostatic energy. Ions generated from hand motion create crossing glitch style streams which naturally fade into an Indonesian Batik pattern reminiscent of Javanese cloth dyeing.
Set against the ubiquitous backdrop of our digital culture this work backgrounds ideals of pixel precision, and foregrounds an alternate paradigm of material value. Liquid Loom explores the LCD glass itself as material, its shape, its color, its manner of responding as a dynamic dance with electrostatic surroundings; the way in which subtle design choices of the structure result in unique visual behavior. Once emancipated from its use as a digital tool, LCD glass reveals natural resonant patterns unmediated through a map of microchips and controllers.
Technical details: Analog electrostatic powered, human touch controlled LCD windows.
Components: Conductive edge traces, LCD glass, anisotropic conductor, acrylic, electro-mechanical ion transducer, LED lights.
Electronics: Power needed for LED backlighting only
Digital/software: None.
This project is sponsored by the SF Awesome Foundation.
