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| Absolute Zero |
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 Absolute Zero: A Light House of Temporality The third law of thermodynamics states There is no disorder in a substance in equilibrium at the absolute zero of temperature As human beings we share a mutual characteristic of being eternally curious, we also share an intuitive and deep understanding of nature as something which draws the limits to our existence. It is obvious that our mutual interest is to survive on this planet and to see that the planet itself survives. The ways in which we exist as modern beings often does not correspond to the will of nature, a conflict that is eternal and profound. Ultimately we rely on our very instinctual and primitive ability to form language in order to navigate the chaos of uncertainty. The languages we have developed over time have taken on many guises and forms, linguistic and otherwise, and two obvious ones that interest us in this process are art and architecture. The collaboration between the Finish artist Osmo Rauhala and the New York based architects Asymptote ( Hani 
Rashid and Lise Anne Couture ) is centered precisely on these communicative possibilities and derivations. Through observations of order and disorder human beings have developed an infinite array of signs and it is the signs expressed through form, image and narrative structure that range in meaning that interest us, signs
that are at once intellectual and visceral. Order itself remains a perplexing condition which will continue to be debated in philosophy and the sciences as it is in the arts. As artists and thinkers we can visit and comment on the notion of order as it pertains to our tenuous relationship to nature outside the scientific debate, and propose instead possibilities that are tangible realities tethered precariously to the human condition.Unpredictable forces of nature, prevalent in the turbulence and forces of water, wind and ice, are all in states 
of perpetual chaos that have been eternally grappled with. The collective work we are embarking on will strive to harness the combined forces of nature and manner them into a tangible inhabitable environment. The 'architecture' and its resultant interiority will communicate through traditions a old as story telling and as advanced as engineering and mathematical theorems (determined by natural systems and orders), a place existing on the edge of these phenomena. The resulting work will attempt to reveal a simultaneously contemporaneous and traditional views of the eternal human-technological- natural environmental condition that is indisputably a global condition of great concern.The video part of our work shows people skating on an artificial ice rink in the center of New York City. People of different ages, sex, and race flow slowly in the same direction, skating peacefully in a circle inside one of the busiest places on earth. Water, which in liquid form is a turbulent and chaotic element, has been artificially turned into ice. Now it is solid and is something that we can understand. It is the structure we need to complete our urban migration. Skating in the rink is fiction and reality at the same time. We are on the stage and inside our own world simultaneously. Inner space becomes outer space. There are two scenes in the video: in one scene people are moving away from the perceiver and in the other they are moving towards the camera. Together they build a circle. Both videos are projected on a revolving door made of glass, one in both ends of the whole sculpture. The revolving door is a metaphor for urban life, a turbine run by the flow of wandering people. It is a door between formal structures and the unpredictable diversity of life. It is a door that makes our inner space an outer space again and again. Asymptote Architecture - Osmo Rauhala New York 2003 top |
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| Copyright © 2005 Osmo Rauhala |
