Jon Sasaki
A Space of Endless Potential, 2020–2024
5.5 × 2.7 × 2.8 m / 18' 2" × 8' 11" × 9'
motorized 3-axis gantry, controller, ball
Something was set in motion.
It should have slowed to a standstill long before now but it didn't, it is still going. Slowly. It appears not to have succumbed to the many forces that threaten to sap its energy, which is strange; in the universe we live in, energy is finite. Once expended, it leaves that thing that held it (a ball, a person, the universe itself) listless and static. Yet this little ball is still bouncing, almost like it exists in a universe outside of ours, untethered from its rules.
This installation, made in collaboration with engineer Gordon Hicks, conjures both a little orange ball that can bounce indefinitely and the charged room that allows it to do so. A place where objects are immune from the forces—of drag, air resistance, friction, kinetic energy loss—that normally bring bouncing balls to a standstill. A place where we can imagine our own energy to be similarly boundless.
The mechanics of the illusion are apparent from the outset: a motorized gantry, similar to the movable bed of a CNC machine or 3D printer, has been scaled to the size of the project room and suspended from the ceiling. It has been programmed to control the ball along three axes of movement following paths of travel that an actual thrown ball would take. The movements are unpredictable, generated in real time, and conceivably might never repeat throughout the exhibition. Incorporating a slow-motion version of real world physics the ball traces an ever unfolding and ultimately unpredictable path.
Ever present, the gantry is hard to ignore. It tells us how the trick is done, while the movements of the ball invite us to disregard those facts and be party to our own deception. To imagine an entity with boundless drive. Slowed to a dreamy pace, the ball ricochets through the BMO project room, transforming it into a lunar, weightless space. Time slows as we contemplate a little spherical object that will never run out of steam, possessing the unflagging energy and dynamism that we might wish for ourselves.
