More magic carpets…

Brian Knep‘s Healing Series are interactive floor pieces that change in response to visitors. When a piece encounters a foreign body, such as a gallery visitor or an object, the pattern pulls away, creating a wound. When the foreign body leaves, the pattern heals itself and the wound closes, but each piece heals itself in a different way.

In Healing #1 the sides of the wound never actually touch, a scar forms, like a memory of the meeting of the visitor with the mat.

Healing #2 has the mat oozing over the wound caused by the interaction. The mat heals itself until only the essence of each scar is left. Eventually this essence also disappears, leaving a glowing mat.

In Healing #3 the reaction is more violent, with the pattern pulsating and quickly reforming over the wounds.

The pieces are an attempt to illustrate the changes that happen when things or people interface with each other. The contact causes changes in all participants, and so has a destructive quality, but change forces growth too, and so has a regenerative quality.

The work is part of the Intimachine exhibition that runs at Art Interactive (Cambridge, MA) till Jan 30.