Clepsydra Anon

Winning entry for OBJECTS exhibition at THE SECRET LIFE OF BUILDINGS symposium, University of Texas at Austin. 

Year: 2016

Team: Chad Connery and Anca Matyiku

Publications: CENTER 21: The Secret Life of Buildings

Two inscrutable black reservoirs, each a smooth black set of shallow nested hemispheres.  Edges and openings dissolve into shadowed gaps and unknown volumes.  Perhaps an instrument for divination or some ritual artifact, they appear cryptic, seemingly immutable and abiding. Without any warning, without indication as to why, a silver fluid runs down its edge from an unseen source: Is it broken? Is it leaking? Is that blood? Why is it metallic? Quicksilver? What does this mean? nothing and anything. The Clepsydra Anon reveals its momentary performance at its own discretion but it is most certainly dependent on human accomplices for its performance to repeat. When its black carapace reaches temperatures of over 85°F its gallium insides begin to melt, drip, and run from the under-lip of one black twin into the waiting orifice of the other.  A strange metal liquid dribbles out for a moment and into another void. In the aftermath it remains a black cipher of an object that performed for a minute or two. A generous curator takes care that the object is exposed to direct sunlight or suitable warmth to activate the clepsydra. Each morning should a performance be desired, the helping human swaps the cooled reservoirs to reposition the solidified gallium ingot in the vertical position. Through the day, heat warms the black thermally conductive reservoir. The ingot of gallium melts inside the cavity and slowly runs out syrupy, off of the edge of one reservoir into the opening of the other. The silver fluid funnels down into the volume below to solidify at night as the reservoir cools.

Like buildings, Clepsydra Anon does not absolutely need the human but through their interactions there is the opportunity for mutual disclosure; an unfolding of uncertainty and curiosity. The object enacts the slippage between our understanding of them and vice versa. Its peculiar presence highlights that such understanding is always incomplete and reinforces that in our interactions with buildings “patience is unevenly distributed.”