SPIRITS
john gerrard
SPIRITS is a rumination on the world's petroleum addiction, aimed at highlighting the impossible bind of humanity's overconsumption of and reliance on forever chemicals and plastics, and a direct confrontation with the millennia-long life cycle of petroleum itself. Organized around four bodies of water and four astronomical events, the work transforms 96 discarded plastic sandals and shoes, collected along the shores of the Pacific, Indian, Mediterranean, and Atlantic Oceans and photoscanned in high resolution, into luminous, interactive virtual sculptures rendered in real time in the browser.
The summer phase of SPIRITS culminated in a Summer Solstice Dance and multi-media performance.
FROM THE BLOG: john gerrard on Peak Oil, Detroit Techno, and Bringing SPIRTS to Life with Richie Hawkins
For the recently released Summer Solstice (Mediterranean Sea) phase of SPIRITS, gerrard expanded the scale and form of the series by moving beyond web browsers to a multimedia installation and performance at the SPIRITS Summer Solstice Dance at LACMA on June 21, where he immersed thousands of people in his artistic investigation of the relentlessness of consumerism and capitalist empire.
