The Question of a Hunch (2015)
“In The Question of a Hunch, Toronto based artist Kika Thorne extends her interests in geometry, the visible spectrum and magnetism as a field upon which to project questions regarding chemical composition and its political ramifications." Melanie O'Brien & Amy Kazymerchyk
Collapsing history, The Question of a Hunch combines the oldest visual representation of an atom with the most recent video capture of an electron to the sound of the earth's magnetosphere.
In the Timaeus, Plato (350 BCE) aligns each element with a corresponding form, fire: tetrahedron, earth: cube, air: octahedron, water: icosahedron and aether: dodecahedron. Thorne’s simplex geometric form, an octahedron, is made of 8 triangular facets. 24 coordinates fix the angle and placement of each equilateral triangle to the wall, floor, ceiling. The octahedron is built out of Flash Gro mylar, a hydroponics light reflector purchased at a local grow op supply store. Onto this she projects a YouTube video of an electron created by Anne L'Huillier and Johan Mauritsson of the Atomic Physics Department at the University of Lund, Sweden, 2008. Phase 2 was mounted in a loading dock with audio from the 1990 NASA Voyager documentation of the earth's magnetosphere. From Plato to Planck, this multi-phase project experiments with relations between energy and will to ask: “if we sing the song of carbon dioxide back to itself, will it fall apart?”
Phase 1: Curated by Melanie O'Brien and Amy Kazymerchyk, Geometry of Knowing, Part 3. On March 21, 2015, as part of the artwork, a chemist, a physicist and a philosopher discuss Carbon Dioxide. (Vance Williams, Steve Dodge and Am Johal). Thanks to Curtis Grahauer, Mandy Ginson and Christina Hedlund.
Phase 2: Nuit Blanche, The Work of Wind, Curated by Christine Shaw. Audio Research by Akash Bansal. Artist's technical team: Akash Bansal, Parul Bansal. Willy Le Maitre, Michal Bartosik, Danny, Matt Cully. Installation crew incl. George Brown Shipping and Receiving Staff, Gabriella Borg, Brooklyn Doran, Eva Chu, Verna Clayton, Alfred Clayton, Alfred, Danny Russell, Mike Scahill, Rebekka Hutton, Adrian Blackwell, Allan Graham, Lindsay and others. Thanks to Willy Le Maitre, David Armstrong, Marc Couroux, Janine Marchessault, Eric Cheneau, Marcus Boone, Ben Donoghue, NASA, SSHRC, George Brown and York University Visual Art PhD. City of Toronto Team: Dan Surman, Jenn Goodwin, Jono Peters, Kirsten, Jeanne Holmes, Sean Hooper, Daniele Pagliaro and others.
The Question of a Hunch Kika Thorne photo: Joseph Devitt-Tremblay
The Question of a Hunch Kika Thorne photo: Joseph Devitt-Tremblay
The Question of a Hunch Kika Thorne photo: Brady Cranfield, SFU