Eric William Carroll and Wil Natzel, Empty Space
The Milky Way is 1,093,000,000,000,000,000,000 football stadiums wide.
Empty Space
Empty Space by Eric William Carroll, in collaboration with designer Wil Natzel, is a multimedia installation that bridges the scales of astronomical and minuscule space and time with objects on a human scale. The journey begins with a corridor that guides the audience into a planetarium-like dome. Built into the architecture of the walkway are a series of “equivalents”–text that compares galaxies with atoms and everything in between (e.g. “The Milky Way is 1,093,000,000,000,000,000,000 football stadiums wide.”). The dome itself is an 18 foot wide geodesic, which recalls both an historic Bubble Chamber as well as a planetarium which serves as a theater for Empty Space. From the outside the viewer will see the colors and rough shapes of a video being played outlined by the frame of the architectural structure. Entering the dome, viewers will sit along the perimeter and watch the video projected onto the ceiling and walls. Carroll’s renditions of the Big Bang and other scientific phenomena will play out over the course of a couple minutes, utilizing stop-motion animation and lo-fi effects from the 1970’s and 80’s, creating a psychedelic combination of science with science fiction.
Artists
Eric William Carroll’s work on photography, science, and nature has been exhibited widely, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, Aperture Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Born and raised in the Midwest, Carroll currently teaches at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Wil Natzel straddles the line between art and architecture with his interventions that resuscitate the brutal boxes contemporary cultural has scraped of all embellishment. His studio uses contemporary digital tools in unexpected ways with unusual materials to manifest new realities to spectacular effect. A graduate of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Wil has designed and created large public projects for The Soap Factory, Northern Spark, and SooVAC. His work has been featured in Wired, MN Original and numerous design blogs.
Illuminate South Loop
Empty Space is part of Illuminate South Loop, a three-day event at Bloomington Central Park (8100 33rd Avenue South) in Bloomington’s South Loop District from February 1 – 3, 2018. This creative placemaking initiative focuses on leveraging the power of the arts, culture and creativity to engage the community.