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E X P A N S I O N

The Body and Space Morphologies Studios

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Sphariaphobia

I do not know what it was, or where it came from, not even where it was when I encountered it. I have no memory of where

– only a memory of what.

An ever alternating body, a shapeshifter, constantly and relentlessly shifting between two states.

I remember the heaviness of the sphere. Crushed as if on the very verge of imploding. Black, pulling, absorbing, its skin wrinkly by having being shrunken and pushed. The heaviest matter conceivable, conveying an intense feeling of fear, terror and anxiety. Collapse and crush.

I remember the terrifying evasiveness, the shapeless body, floating in all directions and none, at the very same time. Nebulous. Supsended in nothing, growing and expanding without a start nor end. Indifferent, and aimless – all whilst growing uncontrollably and potentially devouring it all.

I remember how I was forced to perceive these two states, one after another, and another after one. A relentless shifting between the two, collapsing and expanding.

It found myself soaked in my own sweat, with my heart pounding, often crying. I do not know why.

Capturing the expansion, freezing the time to see if it's possible to express the violent and disturbing nature of growth is what I am studying. Will an image, an imprint, a stamp, a cavity, a painting or a photograph be able to convey the latency that expansion without time inherits?

- Placeholders

Starting my work with expansion I immediately tried to figure out how to make expansion, how to make something expand. I am looking for a very specific type of expansion, but at the same time i have no idea where to find it, how to make it, or if it can be.

Expansion can never be – it does.

I quickly found two methods to make expansion that I could work with. For some reason I have mostly stuck with these two, and used them in different ways. I believe they could both be worked for much longer, as they have great potential to constitute different scenarios. They both expand when one wants them to, at the same time they behave very differently. The imprints they produce can clearly be traced back to where they come from.

I have setteled with the thought that I porbably never will be able to make the kind of expansion I am looking for. I cannot imagine the practical solutions, or physics, for how to make it appear, let alone be captured.

This is however not necessarily a bad thing, as it lets me focus on creating objects that point at something - I can now write without finishing my sentence. This seems to give more freedom in how i execute my works, and forces me to search for something that I do not know of.

- The balloon and the void-piss

A balloon is a flexible bag that can be inflated with a fluid, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, air or water. Modern day balloons are made from materials such as rubber, latex, polychloroprene, or a nylon fabric, and can come in many colors. Some early balloons were made of dried animal bladders, such as the pig bladder. Some balloons are used for decorative purposes or entertaining purposes, while others are used for practical purposes such as meteorology, medical treatment, military defense, or transportation.

A balloon's properties, including its low density and low cost, have led to a wide range of applications.

The rubber balloon was invented by Michael Faraday in 1824, during experiments with various gases.

The balloon gives room for a controlled form of expansion. It is limited by the balloons characteristics. How big the balloon is, the shape it has before it is inflated, how thick the material is, what the material is, what it is filled with and so on. It is easy to get hold of, and was among the first things that came to my mind.

My first work with the balloon consisted of a formwork, filled with plaster wich i then tried to submerge the balloon in.

Ofcourse the air in the balloon did not want to be submerged in the liquid gypsum, so the ballon took on different shapes, trying to escape as I tried to drown it.

I eventually managed to somewhat submerge the balloon and the air inside it. Stacking a big led-weight on top of a plywood plate to hold the balloon in place while I let it sit to dry up.

As the gypsum dries it releases heat, and the water evaporates. During this process the air in the submerged balloon had expanded in such a manner that it had lifted the plywood plate, and all the weight on top of it. Luckily by this point the guypsum had gotten solid enough to restrain the ballon in its original position. The gypsum cooled down, the bouyancy first experienced was now gone, and by sticking a hole in the balloon i was left with an imprint of what had taken place.

1/1

- Schizo-bob and the Joule Thompson effect

Spray foam is a chemical product created by two materials, isocyanate and polyol resin, which react when mixed with each other and expand up to 30-60 times its liquid volume after it is sprayed in place. This expansion makes it useful as a specialty packing material which forms to the shape of the product being packaged and produces a high thermal insulating value with virtually no air infiltration.

Otto Bayer (1902-1982) is credited with the invention of polyurethane in 1937. He succeeded in synthesizing polyurethane foam by exploring his basic idea that mixing small volumes of chemical substances could create dry foam materials.

Polyurethane was further developed for different applications, ranging from shoe soles and cushions to industrial uses. In the 1940s rigid foam was applied to airplanes, and in 1979 polyurethane began being used as building insulation.

The expanding foam does exactly as it is supposed to: it expands. After releasing it from its container it takes on a life of its own for an hour or so. One can try to plan how it will end up when its done expanding, but it always seems to end up different than what one would expect. The concentration of foam, how long the can is shaken, how much is left in the can, how much space the foam has to expand when its released - and so on. All these factors are part in deciding how the foam will behave once released.

Although the foam expands on its own once released, it is still in many ways bound to conditions given in the first place. This has consequences for what I can make of it, and what I cannot. I would for example like to make a blob that has had the opportunity to expand freely in all directions. Such a blob would be the result of the initial concentration of foam, and its ability to expand – and that only. This would be the kind of expansion i am looking for: a free expansion only as a result of the initial conditions and the inherent properties of the medium. Unless the foam was given room to grow in a zero-G environment I cannot see how I would be able to do such a thing. Releasing it into water would give it some freedom, but buoyancy and gravity w

Methods

1.1

Planning an object

making an object

placing the object in a formwork

casting the space between the object and the formwork

1.2

planning an object

expanding an object in a formwork

casting the space between the object and the formwork

1.3

making an object

placing the object in a formwork

casting the space between the object and the formwork

1.4

making an object

lowering the object into the medium contained by the formwork

1.5

expanding an object in a formwork

casting the space between the object and the formwork

1.6

expanding an object into the medium contained by the formwork

2.1

preparing the ground

manipulating the medium

planned pouring onto the ground

manipulating the medium on the ground

2.2

preparing the ground

manipulating the medium