Edge of Chaos II

Abstract

'Edge of Chaos II' is a sculptural object build up with silver granules. Granulation is in this object not used as a decorative technique, instead the granules are used to build the object. 'Edge of Chaos' is a bowl shaped object and is build up in a hemispherical concave mould. When the granules are thrown into the mould they automatically roll towards the deepest possible point in the mould and follow the surface of the inside of the mould. The spheres automatically fill every empty space arranging them into a certain dense and regular order. This is a kind of self-organization, a process in which the internal organization of a system increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside power. This is also what appears in the ordering structures in a lot of plants, such as in the core of sunflowers. The American theoretic biologist and researcher in complex systems, Stuart Kauffman, speaks in this context about ‘order for free’. This free order, the ability that spheres have to order themselves is also one of the reasons why throughout the history of the art of granulation you discover always the same patterns, based on the honeycomb pattern. These patterns are therefore not necessarily a signature of time or space, what ornament very often is, but the result of this self-organizing capacity of spheres. Compared to traditional granulation the mould takes here the function of the base material and the gravity takes over of the glue. Upon the layer that give the object 'Edge of Chaos' the outer shape, several other layers of granules are fused, using chaotic configurations in contrast with the nicely ordered outside layer. The tension between order and chaos culminates on the edge of the bowl where the orderly outside goes over in a chaotic inside.