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This sculpture was a piece commissioned by the Superfront Gallery in Los Angeles for their exhibition, “TIMEless,” an exhibition exploring the 4d possibilities of space. I worked with Michael Fox of FoxLin to develop a sculpture based on a short story which Michael wrote titled “Nano City” (read it here). The story is of a city that is constantly being reborn and destroyed by an army of nano robots. It snakes across the planet consuming whatever it encounters and rebuilding it into a city at the nano scale on its front end and then destroying the city and rebuilding whatever it is that was there to begin with at the nano scale. The idea, then, was to build a kinetic sculpture that would embody this constant reinvention.

The TIMEless sculpture is driven by a motor turning at 60 rpm which drives a series of gears connected to the greater wheel upon which the city lies. The driving motion is pared down via a series of gears to the point that the large wheel ends up turning at the rate of one revolution per year. Upon the outer wheel is a topography made of high-density foam which is constantly being eaten away by a number of robots on one side and rebuilt on the other.