In 1973 I made concrete hippos for Glenrothes New Town in Fife.
In 2023-24 I made hippoARK because life on Earth is threatened
hippoARK as symbol.
In times of climate change, rivers in Africa can dry up.
Hippopotamuses need to keep their skins moist, or they will die.
hippoARK is made from many hand sewing needles as a symbol of our Under-standing and care for these ‘Guardians of the rivers’.
The point of each hand sewing needle penetrates the eye of the needle next to it, for when an eye sees the point of something, it Under-stands.
But there is much more to this than meets the eye, for Under-standing is the singular state implied – we believe – by the paradoxes of quantum entanglement.
Beneath the apparent differences we see around us, all things – including hippos and humans – are as one. The Singularity of Under-standing.
Although hippoARK was made to raise funds for the Turgwe Hippo Trust in Zimbabwe (https://www.savethehippos.info/donate-to-help/) our aim firstly is to take it on tour, to act as a catalyst for a new vision of cognitive environmental re-creativity – a new peoples’ art for unrestricted public spaces. A language whose symbols speak of how things coalesce rather than simply what they are. A language of Under-standing.
In the video below, I try to show how hippoARK would be transported and set up in towns from its carrying case/plinth.
Hippopotamuses are intelligent animals – known as the guardians of the rivers because they protect weaker animal species from predation. Hippos care.
That’s why hippoARK contains many smaller animal forms, whale (hippos closest living relative), crocodile, running human, bird, panther, snake, elephant, spider, and a tree. Here they are in silhouette…
But these forms are not simply contained inside the hippoARK, rather do they coalesce from its skin as a complexity of spatio-temporal Under-standings…. reality in fact.
And this is the central point of the hippoARK. Hippos care, as do we. Quantum entanglement predicts that we coalesce as the very things around us that we care about. We are symbols of the things we love.
The photograph below was taken during the construction of the front right leg of hippoARK. It shows how an animal – a running human, is coalescing into reality as a function of the singularity of Under-standing.
Of Construction
Imagine the hippoARK skin as the two dimensional singularity of Under-standing, from which the animals and the tree are be-coming real in three dimensions. Each triangular section of the figures is made from cardboard wound round with silver lustre brocade thread to create their solidity.
The following photographs were taken during the fifteen month construction period.
The following image shows the elementary moment of a quadri-verse of Under-standing – expressed as a tetrahedron of hand sewing needles.
The quadri-verse is constituted by four tri-verses of needles with the points of all the needles penetrating the eyes of those next to them. For when an eye sees the point of something, it Under-stands…
In practice, the complex curves of hippoARK meant that each of the 12K needles had to be cut to size and resharpened.
The following series of photographs show details of the animals and tree coalescing from the skin of hippoARK.
There are also many sewing needles that were given by friends. I used these where the brain might be, to symbolise thoughts of unity, care and Under-standing. Hippopotamuses care – they groom crocodiles.
