The Intervening Substance

As the viewer enters they are confronted by the Ideoplast.

The Ideoplast greets the viewer training them by asking a series of questions.

Thank you for completing training with The Ideoplast. 

Now that you have learned how to reach the medium network you can receive your materialization.  Please proceed across the expanse to my doppelgänger.

The viewer proceeds across the gallery to the Doppleganger.

As the views speaks to and pressed down onto the Doppleganger the forms around them come to life and fill with air.

The Intervening Substance is inspired by ectoplasm, and the early “spirit mediums” who produced it. Mediumship is the practice of communication between spirits of the dead and living human beings.  Between the 1840s and 1920s the Spiritualist movement was extremely popular, and there were many powerful female mediums.  At the time there was much debate about the science behind these spirit messages and many tests were conducted.  Some mediums were proven fraudulent but others found the support of the scientists.  During this period of research ectoplasm was of special interest to the researchers and they captured mesmerizing photos of what looks like a cloth substance oozing from mediums’ bodies.  One researcher explains  

“The color white is the most frequent…. it can seem soft and a bit elastic when it spreads;…. it gives the sensation of a spider’s web fluttering over the observers’ hand…The substance is mobile. At one moment it evolves slowly, rises, falls, wanders over the medium…”

The medium’s body materializes messages from the beyond.   This gives them power.  Humans strive for guidance, and acceptance from mysterious external forces.  Not only do we pursue messages from the dead but also solicit advice from artificial intelligence, fortune tellers, technology, aliens, gods, and celebrities or social media.  What do we give up when we focus our search for meaning and acceptance on distant external forces? As the viewer interacts with The Intervening Substance they are both medium and audience.  The viewer desires becoming one with the inflatable forms but feels torn between giving into their strange beauty, and wondering what they may want in return.  The viewer must give up a level of control and trust to interact with these sculptures.  In exchange, the sculptures will fill the space with life, expanding and embracing the viewer as they collect their secrets. Ghost-like forms emanate and inflate from their bodies.   In the time period when Spiritualist mediums were popular the forms they produced were mysterious and indistinct messages, but the ectoplasm of The Intervening Substance draws its inspiration from more places than the afterlife.  The forms feel alien and strange but the they are inspired by deep sea creatures which actually exist in another mysterious realm unexplored on the earth.  The deepest parts of the ocean contain mysteries similar to space or the afterlife.  There we find strange sea creatures, radiolaria, and microbes.  These forms appear as though from another world, or out of our own imaginations as they inflate and reveal themselves. The viewer will linger to experience the sculpture but do they know how much the installation is watching them?

The Interviewing Substance was shown at the Foothills At Center in 2021.

The Ideoplast and Doppleganger were fabricated with help from Devin Reilly.

The technology was programmed by Brian Costanza.