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Electric Light Audio-Kinetic Artworks: ‘Ecological Biomes’

'The artist's business requires his involvement in practically everything... the total scope of information he receives day after day is of concern' [1]. It was this view of Hans Haake combined with my background in the natural sciences that caused me to work in the direction of an artist as interlocutor. In 1969, I1 went from my home in Western Canada to the Milwaukee-Chicago area. Not long thereafter I became increasingly aware of the struggle for survival of different forms of life under conditions of overcrowding and pollution. This led me to making what I call 'Ecological Biomes'; artworks that express, in a metaphoric fashion, contemporary, ecological dilemmas by combining aspects of advanced technology with organic matter such as aquatic forms of life and bleached bones. Ecology, as a subfield of biology, can be defined as the study of the inter-relationships between organisms and between organisms and their environments. In part, it is concerned with energy transformations and the utilization of resources. Before the phase of my work I shall describe, I had been concerned mainly with kinetic electric light art objects that presented physical phenomena on an experiential level without the introduction of metaphor, allegory and allusion. For the works dealing with certain cause-effect relationships of technology, especially with industrial applications of technology on organisms in their habitat, I coined the term 'Eco-biome'. 'Eco-biome, No. 1' (Fig. 1) treats metaphorically ecological factors by combining a central Techno-biome and Eco-biome in the form of hemispherical containers at each end. The Techno-biome consists of a box containing four 6 in. long, 25W incandescent light bulbs. Plexiglas rods extend from this box into the hemispherical containers and pipe light that is visible at the grooves on their surfaces and at their ends. Rotating acetate color filters on a disk located between the light bulbs and the rods provide changes in the colors of the light. The hemispherical Eco-biomes are made of Plexiglas. The one on the left contains dead specimens of fish, sea cucumbers and marine annelids in preservative and the one on the right contains bleached bones of various animals. In the dark, the interiors of the Eco-biomes are illuminated by changing colored light received from the Plexiglas rods. 'Eco-biome, No. 2' (Fig. 2) is intended to express a symbiotic relationship between industrial technology and animals in their habitat (fish in an aquarium).