The Mary Miss installation is an intentional and consciously functional material construct intervention within the perfectly functioning system of nature. The intentional and conscious quality in both this act of intervention and how it is perceived, both speak of a significant human component. That is, the part amidst the whole; Perception itself making any distinction at all. The lumber-metal-earth-water construct establishing a hierarchy and relationship between elements with an intended function. Installing the intervention within a natural setting contrasts the duality of man’s invention with nature’s invention. Furthermore, the reflective troughs allow the human to experience a visual connection between the earth, her or himself, and the sky. Concrete, to transient, to ephemeral all at the same moment.

There is a revelation through this contrast of human intention and nature in that human intention (the construct) seems to lose its function when set amidst a vast natural setting. The perfectly cut dimension lumber’s function is dwarfed by the natural apparatus it is connected with. The construct seems to be futilely inserting itself into an already functioning seamless system. Such would force the user to question, what, but more importantly, who are our inventions for. The perception only occurs in human beings. Ricardo Scofidio claimed that the human mind was the “only landscape capable of sustaining the construction of logical incongruities.” Our creations are interventions in nature. We are the intervention in nature. Nature, often indifferent to that which we create but the discourse and progression that it creates qualifies its creation. The human hand shown for man in a natural intervention is a portrait of purpose of the functionless wood.

On the other hand, we are partly nature itself. We are made up of its elements operating as a natural animal and yet we have the ability to dream out of plastic reality and operate in mind space.

What conditions are necessary for us to experience plastically what we dream?

I am finishing the drawing this weekend.
Matt