Building Material 19 Art & Architecture excerpts: From Here to Mars by Grace Weir
Excerpt from: A cloud, a house, from here to Mars.
In 1906, Albert Einstein, when defining a methodology for the system of co-ordinates, suggested that, if a cloud was hovering over Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, in order to measure its position we should erect a pole up to it. The length of the pole coupled with the position of the foot of the pole would then give us the exact co-ordinates of the cloud. He wrote that, while in practice, the rigid surfaces which constitute the system of co-ordinates were generally not available, this was an example of a distance AB.
I had spent some time filming clouds and knew them to be large chaotic systems constantly forming and dissipating. They had a surfacelessness that defied a point and therefore an order. They gave the lie to the possibility of definition. But I was so charmed with the idea of erecting sticks up to clouds in order to measure their height that I went to Potsdamer Platz and made a film which depicts a man carrying out the act of raising a walking stick up to a cloud. The stick appears to reach the cloud when seen from his point of view while lying on his back looking up at it. In 2001 I made another work where, using a helicopter, I flew a perfect circle around a cloud, filming both views, the view in towards the cloud and the view out into the surrounding skyscape. Projected simultaneously opposite each other on two screens, these films cause the viewer to float, turning in the in-between space of the two points of view.
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Biography: Grace Weir
Grace Weir is interested in aligning a lived experience of the world with scientific knowledge and theory, in making work that examines and transcends reason through rational means. She works mostly in film and video and is interested in making a critical appraisal of film through the actual making of film. Her work is wide ranging, from structural cinematic works to more personal experimental video works, installations and web projects.