Micro-diamond: A House of Gratitude

[Micro-diamond: A House of Gratitude] invites the visitor to experience every passing millisecond as a weighty and tangible substance. In order to construct such an experience, [Micro-diamond] offers multiple strategies for prolonged contact with “the now”.

One such strategy involves the active reconstruction of fleeting phenomena and our relationship to them. While insect noises or bird song can be recorded or played back, they can also be re-synthesized by hand, lovingly rebuilt, in an attempt to discover their interior qualities and to provide an incessantly repetitive reminder that each second is precious. House plants become a symbol of the domestic reconstruction of “nature”.

In [Micro-diamond] the house-plants are both literally alive, and animated with servo motors. The installation takes up the best intentions of Dr. Frankenstein without the devastating consequences; or maybe there is something tragic in the desire to hold on to the transient.

The concept of slowing down time contains implications of the surreal or supernatural– these will be enhanced through corporate spiritual projections coupled with miniaturized space imagery and vastly magnified ordinary miniatures– popcorn or tiny insects, for example. Spiritual guides encourage the visitors to engage in time-consuming, endless and circuitous games– the end is never far from the beginning.

Another strategy for slowing down time emerges through a directionless music. Often our listening is anticipatory, goal-oriented; through an immersive solid-state-static-sound-scape, one can refocus the mind on present activity.

Performers will offer words of gratitude, as gratitude itself is an act of savoring the present or recent past. Rounding out the experience, [Micro-diamond] will use [holographic] projections, lavender-scented mist, and a reconstructed waiting room to provide the visitor with an alternative timeline for the visit, one that moves slowly or perhaps timelessly. An oversized water clock measures the time passing, slowly and erratically. Other physical rebuilds re-establish missed connections with the world we’ve built around us.