"Franz sculpture is a physical representation of the 'game of life', a system invented in 1970 by John Horton Conway as a computer program. A grid comprises of cells. Cell can be activa- ted, and considered 'alive' or inactive, and considered dead. For a cell to continue to live it must have exactly three of its neighboring cells alive. For a cell to be reborn it must have precisely two neighboring cells alive. Franz played out the system on his computer. He then enacted the results on the aluminum. Each hammer mark on the grid on the aluminum represents a cell that was activated. The resulting sculpture is the trace of the game played, one that has been me- thodically enacted by hand onto a physical grid in aluminum. It is an act that breaks the material down, makes the system physical, and distorts the imposed grid. Usually the system is calcula- ted and executed by a machine, watched by a human. Here the process distorts this structure, Franz physically implements the system, nobody watches it. In this absence of any spectacle, we are left with an artifact." |
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