KATY FOLEY

SUMMER SESSIONS

Prospect for mineral deposits and material meaning in a speculative climate of possibility. Add your personal illuminated talisman to the cumulative spatial influence.

*Summer Sessions - titled after Boyarsky’s International Institute of Design platform for the dissemination of radical architectural ideas and the visionary proposals of Archigram and Superstudio.

OPTICAL CALCITE 

Iceland spar, the natural parallelogram, has a composition that double refracts light making objects placed behind it appear double. Flawless specimens are valued for their use in optical instruments.

OPTICAL CALCITE 

Calcite brings clarity to one's perception of the physical world and of oneself, helping one to see past errors and ways to correct them for benefit in the future.

BISMUTH

In the United States bismuth crystals are mostly grown in a lab. Bismuth is a natural element that has a simple metallic appearance unless it is heated to its low melting point when its structure becomes crystalline. The complex reflective surface is an oxidized patina.

BISMUTH 

Native bismuth crystals are extremely rare, though have been found in Peru. It is the heaviest element that is not radioactive, heavier than lead and as scarce as silver. It is a diamagnetic material which induces a magnetic field strong enough to possibly levitate over a rare earth magnet. 

IRON OXIDE 

Iron oxides that formed from soils are believed to have been created by the precipitation of iron from seawater during the Proterozoic Eon 1.6 billion years ago. Now iron oxides provide electronic and magnetic properites to bankcards. Iron turns to iron oxide from contact with oxygen, or in combination with water and other elements.

THE NEW ATLANTIS (1626) Francis Bacon (fragment)

We have also perspective houses where we make demonstrations of all lights and radiations and of all colors; and out of things uncolored and transparent we can represent unto you all several colors not in rainbows, as it is in gems and prisms, but of themselves single.We represent also all multiplications of light, which we carry to great distance, and make so sharp as to discern small points and lines. Also all colorations of light: all delusions and deceits of the sight, in figures, magnitudes, motions, colors; all demonstrations of shadows. We find also divers means, yet unknown to you, of producing of light, originally from divers bodies. 

Bacon cont. 

We procure means of seeing objects afar off, as in the heaven and remote places; and represent things near as afar off, and things afar off as near; making feigned distances. We have also helps for the sight far above spectacles and glasses in use; we have also glasses and means to see small and minute bodies, perfectly and distinctly; as the shapes and colors of small flies and worms, grains, and flaws in gems which cannot otherwise be seen, observations in urine and blood not otherwise to be seen. We make artificial rainbows, halos, and circles about light. We represent also all manner of reflections refractions, and multiplications of visual beams of objects.

NEODYMIUM MAGNETS

Rare earth magnets are the most powerful magnets in the world. They will mess with your radio frequencies and wipe out your computer hard drive, electronics and credit cards.

LED THROWIES

Rare earth magnets are taped to a completed LED circuit by individuals empowered to influence their environment via magnetic force. Grafitti Research Lab provides this and other open source technologies for urban communication.

Documentation credit to Jori Ketten and John O'Keefe