How to Break a Beer Bottle and Fix It in 12 Easy Minutes
I've never thrown a beer bottle across a room but I've definitely seen one break. The pieces shatter and scatter, and like a laundry detergent commercial, I wish I could just hit the rewind button and see it all come back together. Brooklyn-based artist Jonathan Schipper taps into this desire with a
LOS ANGELES — I’ve never thrown a beer bottle across a room but I’ve definitely seen one break. The pieces shatter and scatter, and like a laundry detergent commercial, I wish I could just hit the rewind button and see it all come back together.
Brooklyn-based artist Jonathan Schipper taps into this desire with a slow-moving installation called Measuring Angst, which he says was inspired by watching a beer bottle thrown across a room. Over the course of 12 minutes, a series of rotating robotic arms break and then reassemble a single beer bottle in a samsaric cycle of birth and rebirth.
In an interview with Co.Design, he described three iterative designs, starting with a spring and pulley that soon evolved into a brake system powered by Microsoft’s Visual Basic and a motion programming set developed by Peter Norton (yes, that Norton).
The work continues Schipper’s fascination with visualizing entropy, from Slow Inevitable Death of America Muscle, a mesmerizing slow motion car crash, to Slow Room, a living room ever so slowly pulled into a hole over the course of a month. But what gives the beer bottle piece an additional oomph is the idea that maybe things could go back to the way they were … until they’re broken into pieces once more.
