ICARUS REALIZED
An organics based installation in response to Fermi's Paradox.
I’d long wanted to sculpt a bird from string and feathers and I combined this goal with a favored medium of Lunaria pods to create an Icarus-like scene that reflects our current state of environmental crisis. Adding a “living room of complacency” to the piece and one popular hypothetical answer to Fermi’s paradox, (that intelligent life destroys itself shortly after industrialization), is represented in a single visual snapshot.
I’d long wanted to sculpt a bird from string and feathers and I combined this goal with a favored medium of Lunaria pods to create an Icarus-like scene that reflects our current state of environmental crisis. Adding a “living room of complacency” to the piece and one popular hypothetical answer to Fermi’s paradox, (that intelligent life destroys itself shortly after industrialization), is represented in a single visual snapshot.
Materials:
Lunaria annua seed pods
Common Starling (found deceased)
Household Items
Icarus -
In Greek Mythology Icarus is a tragic theme of failure at the hands of hubris. In the legend, wearing wings crafted of feather and wax, Icarus falls to his death after flying too close to the sun.
Fermi's Paradox (also known as “The Great Silence”) -
Fermi’s “paradox” is based largely on the positive result of astrophysicist Frank Drake’s equation to estimate the expected number of active, communicative, extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. The (controversial) result indicates that: based on the scale and age of the universe, it's measurable distribution of planets and stars, and our best understanding of the permutations that are necessary to evolve life, there is a very high probability that intelligent life has evolved many times over. Simply stated then, Fermi's paradox is "where are they?” When we train antennae to look for signals we find only silence over great expanses of space and time.
Lunaria annua seed pods
Common Starling (found deceased)
Household Items
Icarus -
In Greek Mythology Icarus is a tragic theme of failure at the hands of hubris. In the legend, wearing wings crafted of feather and wax, Icarus falls to his death after flying too close to the sun.
Fermi's Paradox (also known as “The Great Silence”) -
Fermi’s “paradox” is based largely on the positive result of astrophysicist Frank Drake’s equation to estimate the expected number of active, communicative, extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. The (controversial) result indicates that: based on the scale and age of the universe, it's measurable distribution of planets and stars, and our best understanding of the permutations that are necessary to evolve life, there is a very high probability that intelligent life has evolved many times over. Simply stated then, Fermi's paradox is "where are they?” When we train antennae to look for signals we find only silence over great expanses of space and time.