THE PENDULUM PROJECT
Site responsive installation for a science building on a college campus
Alamosa, Colorado
"The Pendulum Project" is a sculptural installation designed for William Porter Hall at Adams State College. This new math and science building was designed with a 3-story Foucault pendulum hanging through openings at each floor of its lobby space. The site responsive art piece creates a context for this scientific instrument as a way of marking time and a metaphor for learning. The marble mosaic in the pit below the pendulum depicts a hand planting a seed, and it is surrounded by granite tiles that are etched with symbols for the scientific disciplines taught inside the building. At the floor above this is a suspended metal frame portraying a silhouette of the local horizon. And at the third level floor is a parallel ring showing the constellations of the zodiac. Each of these frame/forms is accompanied by a series of etched tiles, one showing symbols of the zodiac and the other revealing a meteor shower. In conjunction with these tiles, the metal frames represent human ways of marking time that are complimentary to time as measured by a pendulum.
Crowning the installation is a suspended aluminum leaf that is surrounded by smaller airbrushed leaves on the ceiling. These leaves are the culmination of the planted seed, and they echo the hand form below. The large floating leaf is cut with star tails, another human conception that describes the passage of time.
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