Daedalus Departs: Holding Pattern/Problem
Solo show, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA, USA
2010
Commissioned installation for the inauguration of the new MIT Media Lab. Created using de-acquisitioned pieces of once-groundbreaking research from the MIT Museum: Wingspan of the Monarch B human-powered airplane, windtunnel model of Toledo-OH, and drogue parachute.
The artwork incorporates two distinct objects of technological research: the wingspan of the human-powered airplane Daedalus (1985) and a wind tunnel model of the industrial city of Toledo, Ohio (1983) the place of the artist’s birth. Both of these artifacts were given by the MIT Museum, where a vast number of experiments, instruments, and documents of once ground-breaking innovations achieved by MIT researchers are archived. These objects represent fragments left behind by the ever-expanding narrative of technological progress.
Once an object enters outer space it will remain there perfectly preserved. It will travel constantly and endlessly until it inevitably collides with another piece of space debris. The number of these objects does not shrink but rather grows; there is no thought given as to how this space detritus will return to Earth and its fiery embrace. What is left of the Daedalus now circles over the exhibition hall of MIT's new Media Lab building and the lab's vision of the future.
