H.E.D.O.N.
Type | Art, Sculpture
Year | 2022
Project Site | Arnhem
Hydrogen Explosion Device for Ordered Noise.
HEDON is a sculpture-installation that is a small replica of hydrogen production/consumption infrastructure. It performs on-demand explosions by igniting an oxygen-hydrogen mixture produced via electrolysis, using a large water column draining through DC generators to fill in for renewable energy. At the brink of the energy transition, with salvation or devastation at play, HEDON explores the premises of power and control that such a mission implies. At scale, the transition means millions of tonnes of new material infrastructure will be produced, formed, designed, shipped, used, and disposed of. We believe this is the time to explore radical alternatives, not only to solve our problems but to impact the culture that produces them. Exploring a re-orientation of our values towards practices of healing and care-taking, new forms of meaning, living, and happiness. Towards embracing crisis and overcoming failure.Together.
Deep-Time
If the climate crisis is about identity rather than agency, how can we look at ourselves differently to start reshaping who we are? The project uses deep-time future scenarios to disengage and cast a different light on our artifacts. Our doing will leave traces for our future selves to understand. What were we doing? Did it make sense? Were we involved in interesting rituals? Our machines exist more legitimately as raw materials in the past and fragments in the future than roaring engines in the present. Once discarded, the fossils of our artifacts will exist beyond the human-centered and performance-driven logic that produced them, speaking of nostalgia for a future we never had.
Materiality
Building on future scenarios of scarcity of resources and energy shortages, the project gets closer to the contingency and uniqueness of waste as the promise for an alternative materiality. Remains from our near past become building materials, ornament, and structure for our machines. This time, built to last briefly, fragile and precarious like the fossils they are made of. Scavenging and caring for the disdained and broken pieces we have left behind reveals a different meaning for our making. Cleaning some of the collateral damage as a collective operation.
Method
Situated knowledge and improvisation substitute control and precision when engaging with the byproducts of civilization. They inform building methods capable of working with structural uncertainty and overcoming crises as valuable design elements. Each piece is singular once it has been deformed from its production-line precision, calling for trial-and-error processes and fit-for-purpose solutions to account for that specificity. A building method creates horizontal collaborative structures where knowledge exchange processes take place and re-building shapes out as a communal enterprise. One looks for the piece and the fit with the meaning, the fit with the piece, and the fit with the meaning. If there is no progress, neither is decline. Design as a loose guide.
