"Helmet 2" represents a physical device that offers an engagement to displace the viewer's empiricism and ontology. The visual and aural perception of the spectator is redefined as soon as the viewer enters the device by placing his or her head in the center of the spherical object. The lenses that now surround the observer create distortions and the sound inside the space is filtered though both the geometry and materiality of the apparatus. This shift is furthermore represented in the formal gesture of sticking one's head inside the device. On the theoretical level it alternates the ontology of the view as follows: By entering the object the spectators' head and brain are inside a new world. The geometrical origin / the center of the sphere overlaps with the location of the viewer's brain and thus the persons’ mental center. While the body of the person is left behind, still standing in the other world, outside the device, the sculpture separates the spectator's body from the brain. Thus the mental soul and the physical body are temporarily split.

dimensions: 36" (sphere diameter)

photography by Mimi Cabell

 


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