The escape pod at the Lunatarium, New Years Eve. 2001

At Deitch projects, we had encountered odd persons offering these alien pods for sale, as if they (the pods) were a batch of kittens looking for a good owner. Speculation is, they are some sort of giant sperms, capable of impregnating planets. Clearly, the extra-terrestrials were soon to be among us.

Expecting visitors who were not from earth for the new year's party, I proceeded to construct a large inflated bubble, in which the visitors could move about on the floor of the Lunatarium, safe in their own container. How would they get there? What would they look like? Would they come through a black hole? Would they appear as beautiful women, offering to help build the bubble?

My plan for the bubble was that the visitors would walk as they normally would for their kind, and the bubble would roll with them, like a 'gerbil ball'. The bubble was to seal a pocket of air inside itself, for the visitor to breath. It would not rely on external air, except when first filled. Initial testing of the bubble would be done by a human, using a fan and ambient air to fill it. I needed materials, and a design.

The first material I looked at was 10 mill Vinyl sheet. In hand, it had the strength needed, though intuition suggested 20 mil or more would be better. But the price of the thicker material was too high. I obtained a yard. In the photo, the artist Calmx is seen to inspect the material, and finds a polychromatic effervescence in it.

Many patterns came to mind for making a rough sphere from flat 52" wide material. The two lobed two piece pattern on a baseball, a series of eqi-latitude bands and round pole caps, and pentagons tiled into a dodecahedron. Each had it's own problems of scaling, required stretchiness of the material, and symbolic implications.

The yin-yang nature of the baseball pattern eluded me, I could not guess what the correct shape should be. It seemes to be a morph starting from two sheets wrapped over a cube. The pattern would limit the circumference of the ball to less than four times the width of plastic sheet.

Likewise the eqi-latitude bands. In it's simplest form, a cylinder, the diameter would be the width of the material. Making it larger, say two bands, requires that the bands be cut as arcs. I did not determine how much stretch the material would need to allow the bands to be cut as rectangular strips. Single seam arcs cut from long rolls of plastic would severely limit the size of the bubble.

Finally, I considered pentagon panels. On inspection, the height of the bubble would be high enough. The shape seemed simple enough. And the symbolic associations of pentagrams seemed very appropriate. Pentagrams, I had read many places, can be used to contain alien spirits, and at the same time protect whoever is inside them. And it takes 12 of them to tile a sphere. 12 months in a year, a new-years party.. Pentagons in a dodecahedron it would be.

Shortly afterwards, a call from the van picking up materials came in, how many yards would I need?
Well.. A quick look at my sketches told me to multiply 10 times the width of the material. Two days later, I had the material.

We made first a circle of the diameter of the material, then a pentagram inside the circle. We determined five equal sides by guessing and correcting five times. Outside the pentagram, I drew a pentagon, which was cut out, and served as a template for all the other pentagons.

Eight pentagons later, and we are short three! Oops, that should have been 12 times the width. But, also, the width I used to calculate was less than that purchased. None the less, we set the pentagons out on the flat floor, spaced to form a pentagram on the cement. Immediately, a dancer entered the space, and declared it restful and peaceful. I believed the pentagram symbols were working. Photographs of the symbolic structure laid out on the floor did not happen.

Overlap seams joining the pentagons were made with a Tetrahydrofuran (THF , LC50rat: 21,000 ppm/3H) based glue. The fumes became quite potent, and tended to melt the occupant. Previous tests of a wrist band of the material joined with THF showed it to be quite difficult to escape from. Clearly a mortal danger was lurking in the wings of probability.
In large letters, with a bold arrow, facing the inside of the bubble, we wrote "ESCAPE HERE ==>" by the airlock entrance.

We knew the structure was an escape pod now. It would have enough air sealed inside it to allow a person to escape, should the gravity fail at the Lunatarium, and the vacuum of starry space were allowed to come in. If the pod could not be finished in time, none of us were going to get out alive! At least one person could escape, if it were finished.

At last it was done. The air-lock was totally inadequate, even after patching with zip-lock bag seals. Among other things, it should have been obvious that air-pressure would put tension at the straight line seams, and the deformable nature of the material would result in overlapping lips of the airlock not lying on straight lines. Finally, in desperation, the air-lock was sealed with adhesive tape, myself inside.

Immediately, I found myself at the mercy of the strangely colored person on the outside, who was in control of my air. I begged for air, gesturing wildly at the intake lines. She gestured back, that first I must drink more Mescal. I did so, she did so, in repeated succession, until the alcohol was gone. Kids, this was dangerous! A staff lunatic came by, and asked if I needed any help. I told them to be sure the strangely colored person knew I needed air. The lunatic seemed to understand. The booze gone, I ejected the bottle out the air filling tube, and walked away in the escape pod! It was good for about 20 yards before the air lock leaks flattened it. Disoriented, I navigated back to the colored lights of the launch site and the strangely colored person with the air. She demanded that I get out right away, because the floor was flooding with water from overflowing toilets.

Vinyl is almost 50% chlorine, a dangerous corrosive gas I thought I had left behind with my work with Xenon-Chloride lasers. Should the vinyl material ignite, would it release toxic quantities of chlorine gas? The vinyl site says it is just fine, it doesn't hardly burn, anyway. OK, so, I have contributed about $50 of energy to the waste stream, if this stuff is thrown away. I am told it is somewhere in storage at the Lunatarium.

Goals and discussion.

Challenge the sense of helplessness in the face of technical power.

“This is an escape pod. If it is not finished in time, no one here will get out alive!” With confusing sheets of plastic set out on the floor, and the final construction obviously not perfectly planned out, it is clear to most observers that the escape pod, as planned, has a very low probability of success. One person even wagered their internet company against it. And yet, an insane imperative to prepare for an absurdly improbable disaster leads the artist on. This simple need must be met with the resources now at hand. It is a test. Both a test of the artist’s abilities, and a test of the community they find themselves in.

It is also a statement, that this absurdly improbable disaster could indeed be survived, that the community has within itself the power to do this thing, should it need to.

Illustrate the artist’s utter dependence on the outcome of their creative act.

Comments to and from the audience:

“It is an experiment! I do not know if it will work. If I did, I would not do it.”

“It is a brave act, to survive on your art alone.”

“You should be getting at least $3000 for those things!”

“Drink up! Or you get no more air!”

Explore self containment and individual isolation.

A large part of the motivation to make the pod, of course, was ego. It would be mine. It would show off my own creative ability. It would be one more entry in a long resume of creations and inventions. It would lead to fame and fortune and a satisfying sex life. It would be a cool costume.

Inside that self contained bubble, a person could not survive for long. However toxic the atmosphere outside the bubble, eventually it must be re-entered. The isolation it offered was in fact an illusion, for survival became even more dependent on the outside persons helping to create and maintain the isolation.

I found that the construction required help from the community, offers by passing observers to draw pentagrams, make seams, or offers of simple encouragement on the creation of the piece. This community collaboration and participation is critical, I believe, to the art work’s future success, and that is the most important finding of this experiment.