Proposal:

In Bridge 3, I would like to research dust. One of the things that I find interesting is to explore modern society’s relationship with dirt, and dust in particular. The concept of household- dust is continuously changing; looking backwards into humankind history, we can find how relatively new the concepts of dirt and cleanliness are; While I use dust as my subject matter, I see it as part of a wider idea; of dust, dirt, cleaning, hygiene and their place in contemporary time and space. There are many ways in which I can investigate this subject, each one from a different perspective , and each investigation would be performed in different manners.

For my prototype, I have collected dust-balls from my vacuum cleaner after vacuuming my room for two weeks, modelling an archive of 14 unique dust balls, one for each day. I photographed each dust-ball separately, on neutral background, while attempting to keep them in their weird-looking formed shapes.

In addition to the shooting, I systematically scrutinised the content of each ball and listed it. Finally, I constructed the 14 images, juxtaposed with a detailed list of every dust-ball content. Some of the components repeated themselves overtime (like carpet fuzz), while some were featured only on a specific day (Broccoli bits.) What I found the most successful was how aesthetic the archive came out to be: the images of the dust-balls against the white wall, integrated with the text, made an interesting, refreshing visualisation of dust.

Originally, my idea for bridge 3 was to collect dust from various households, and in the same manner as in my prototype, to photograph the dust balls and add textual description to each of them. In practice, I would vacuum dust from various houses around the city, taking in notice the differences between these houses: the amount of people living in the house, their lifestyle, gender, socio-economic status, age, nutrition, geographical location and even the type

and age of building and dwelling space.
I am hoping that after putting all my findings one next to the other I could analyse how

(and if) some of the above data connects to the dust found in every household. There are two restrictions that can potentially weaken this research: first, the amount of houses I can actually go to collect dust from is limited. Even if I’ll manage to collect dust from 20-30 houses, it is still not enough to build a strong and stable theory statement from. Secondly, there is a limited amount of information I can draw from a ball of dust, using only my eyes to study the content. While it is appealing to list perceptible components such as weed or cookie crumbs, it is not easy to explicitly tell where do all those little parts of the dust-ball come from.

An alternative approach I can take, is using a microscope-camera to photograph OR film different forms of dust. In this project, I think it can be interesting to take samples of dust from places that are considered to be high-culture, juxtaposed those of what modern society would refer to as low-culture. For example, taking dust particles from the frame of Monet’s stunning The Water Lily Pond painting, and from a 99 cents pizza stand in Bushwick. Dust will be collected from places such as: a homeless person’s mattress, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea, an H&M store, the Metropolitan Opera House,“La Boom” nightclub, Grace Church, Green-Wood Cemetery, art galleries, graffiti-decorated walls, Del Posto fine-dinning restaurant, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Target, (The choice of spaces is still in process). After collecting a reasonable amount of dust samples (20), I would record them with the microscope. The result will be a collection of abstract microscopic images of dust, or maybe a video work. I think this will be fascinating exploration of the idea of beauty in time. A restriction that I should take into consideration is, again, the geographical limited space I can work in.

Another idea, is to find a how to solidify dust balls. There are two ways that I can go about it: The first, is figuring how to freeze \ solidify \ coagulate \ fossilise a ball of dust so it will become a stiffed abstract sculpture. I have been looking for materials that can be applied on a dust-ball and to achieve this effect, but there is not enough structured information about that online. If I decide to go with this method I should experiment with various products and substances, only then I will see if it is at-all possible. On a similar line of thought, I can also encapsulate dust-balls by casting them into clear resin to create the notion of a dust ball frozen (\ suspended) in time and space. If I will use the second method, the use of acrylic \ plastic will give this artwork another layer of meaning: plastic as a nonperishable substance corresponding with dust —that is nonstop changing particles of earth or waste matter.

At last, I thought about creating see-through soup bars out of glycerine and dust. This theme will be raising thoughts about cleaning habits that are so deeply rooted in our environment but yet so culturally structured that are no longer examined or doubted.

Online references and research

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/household-dust-toxic-chemicals-from-common-products/

http://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i7/Tracing-chemistry-household-dust.html

http://paulhazelton.com/category/dust/

http://fineartamerica.com/art/photographs/scanning+electron+micrograph

http://theromanticdisease.tumblr.com/dust

https://www.microbe.net/tag/dust/

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/what-your-dust-says-about-you

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1814/20151139

Data Visualization

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0064133 http://planktonchronicles.org/en/episode/protists-cells-in-the-sea/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUgpEc7PU4U http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1814/20151139pr http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0064133