Imaginary Explosions
Signal Amulets

Brass, polymer, custom software, battery-operated custom microcontrollers, vitrines, pigment print on paper, painted foam, plexiglass

The Signal Amulets are designed as transportable instruments across sites and film shoots, identifying the wearers as members of the network in Imaginary Explosions. Throughout the episodes, the Signal Amulets enable the network to listen to and communicate with human and inhuman agents.

The fabrication of the instruments demonstrate transformative aesthetic innovations with spatial, non-lens-based photographic capture. The brass housing was created by cutting 3D fragments from the digital elevation topographic models of the volcanoes Eyjafjallajökull and Chaitén, modeling these to fit the custom microcontroller components, 3D-printing the components in wax, and then casting these in solid brass.

The videos feature large, volcanic rocks collected from various film sites (basalt, pumice, obsidian) that were laser scanned to create photorealistic 3D models. The models oscillate against a backdrop of flashing cross-section micrographs of stones and meteorites from geological collections around the world.