Past Projects – Caroline Bouguereau

Inertial

(2000)

Experiment which alone shows the nullify of all those adduced against the motion of the earth.

“Shut yourself up with some friend in the main cabin below decks on some large ship, and have with you there some flies, butterflies, and other small flying animals. Have a large bowl of water with some fish in it; hang up a bottle that empties drop by drop into a wide vessel beneath it. With the ship standing still, observe carefully how the little animals fly equal speed to all sides of the cabin. The fish swim indifferently in all directions; the drops fall into the vessel beneath(…) have the ship proceed with any speed you like, so long as the motion is uniform and not fluctuating this way and that. You will discover not the least change in all effects named, nor could you tell from any of them whether the ship was moving or standing still.”

Galileo Galilei, Dialogo, 1632

Athanasius Kircher’s Magnetic Clock

(2001)

The machine is inspired by a seventeenth century machine designed to prove the motion of the earth, but really worked by a trick as revealed by the seventeenth century Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher. The machine uses hidden magnets to make the globe of the Earth rotate slowly. The fish made of glass, hovers mysteriously in the liquid and points to the correct time on the globe, so the machine is really a clock and a miniature model of the universe at the same time. The machine is now housed in Stanford University Libraries in the Lane Reading Room.

Venice Biennale – Man a plant

(2007)

These ceramic pieces look like organic life forms and explore the common structures that unite human anatomy and the plant world. The idea is to re-situate humans in nature through biomorphism or geomorphism. The deltas of rivers or the branches of trees have a similar design to the vascular system. “Man a plant” replaces “man a machine” as the dominant metaphor. French eighteenth century philosopher, de la Mettrie, in his essay l’Homme plante describes in a very poetic way the similarity between humans and plants and is a source of inspiration for my current work.