Dada Lotto, 2021
Site: various locations, Geelong
Media: aluminum, wood, bicycle wheel, ping pong balls, sensors, computer, LCD screen, DC motor
Dimensions: 7 x 2 x 1.5m
A biophilic abstract machine, this work links three sites around Geelong, collecting, re-presenting and abstracting elemental data contrasting and referencing two disparate things: the early Dada work of Marcel Duchamp, and the effects of climate change. Duchamp’s abstract and improbable assemblages (machines) emerged as if from another world, and at the Tract site we have built his work, Glider Containing Water Mill in Neighbouring Metals. We’ve put it into action as a key cog in our assemblage that measures the temperature differential between Geelong’s city centre and the Botanical Gardens. Temperature sensors at both sites feed information back to the machine at Tract and re-present the data as the kinetic propulsion and build-up of hundreds of ping pong balls – ‘Data (Dada) Lotto’. The greater the differential, the faster the machine works. The third site – between Eastern Beach and the Botanical Gardens – is integrated into the work: a film of local grasses (poa labillardieri and themeda triandra) and trees (eucalyptus leucoxylon bellarenensis) in danger of being overrun by rampant development. Our climate problems are very real, and manifest in measurable data and often, imperceptible, but devastating ways. This work gives us an absurdist and abstracted view of climate data in real-time and in four dimensions.