The Cubic Structural Evolution Project
The City Gallery in Wellington have an exhibition on at the moment called Demented Architecture
The centrepiece, Olafur Eliasson’s The Cubic Structural Evolution Project has drawn me back numerous times for a lunch time session. It is basically a collaborative art project. A table full of white Lego that one can sit down at and do their part in the creation of a cityscape. Well, I’m not sure that a cityscape is even the aim of the exercise as I didn’t read the blurb, but that’s what was being created when I was there.
On the first visit I tried to start from scratch. In the meager time available, surrounded by these great behemoth structures, I frantically worked at creating my own worthy addition. The finished result was of course, mediocre by comparison and gone when I went back the next day. I was not surprised at all.
Having taken on some wisdom from the experience, this second time I created a beast headed robot figure standing with his hands forming a namaste. This beast, though relatively ordinary on its own, found it rightful place high up on the front of another creator or creators great temple. With grand staircase below and mighty DNA representative tower behind him. Two days later I went back and my mighty beast had survived, albeit with some minor modifications.
On the next visit I found the remains of a fallen behemoth that had donated some of it’s very being to the rise of some other great creation. It was a worthy tower in its own right so I crafted unto it a sturdy new base, crowned it with the top taken off another tower and built a rather solid bridge across to the even mightier high rise next to it. The creation shalt thus survive until there is either no pissant little creation nearby to dismantle. Or it gets in the way of another persons grand vision. Much like real life really.
“Our whole civilisation is a collaborative effort”
Which set the old brain in motion in the direction of the old adage that no art is created in a vacuum. Even more so, nothing at all is. Everything we do is inspired by something else. A lot of what we create relies on the efforts of others. Our whole civilisation is a collaborative effort. The western world has this fixation with protecting intellectual property as if the person that came up with this particular slant on an idea should hold all rights to it and woe unto anyone that dare create anything remotely similar. Then we end up with bollocks like Apple trying to patent round corners on a device or the Mavin Gaye’s greedy family vs Pharrell and Robin Thicke case. If we stifle the ability of others to build upon our creations then we stifle innovation. We limit that which can be created.
Anyway… here’s a dreamified deepdream version just because.
Anyway, go down there and play with some Lego. Though best be quick about it cos the gallery is closing on the 10th for quite some time.
