This is affection
Motorized reactive kinetic sculpture, 2022
carbon sticks, magnetic paint, nylon thread, electromagnets, aluminium, various mechanical and electronic components
145 x 61 x 5 cm
This is affection is the second work in a trilogy comprising This is air, This is affection, and This is reflection. Each is dedicated to moments that elude immediate grasp — seemingly incidental phenomena that are nonetheless deeply inscribed in our perception and continuously shape our understanding of reality.
The titles refer to David Foster Wallace’s essay This is Water, in which he introduces the concept of “default settings” — those unconscious perceptual patterns through which we organize the world without noticing it.
At the core of This is affection lies the very notion of being affected — not as an emotional response, but as the condition of all perception. In philosophy, affection is a term of deep resonance: Descartes describes it as the direct impact of an object on the senses, while Kant recognizes it as the prerequisite of all intuition — that passive touch which precedes thought itself.
But it is not only things that affect us: encounters with other people, with systems, with ideas, with architecture — and with art — can all trigger affection. It is not the object that determines the response, but the relation.
Yet what if we can no longer discern how cause and effect are connected? What does it mean for us as a society if reality is not fixed but co-created through perception — and if that perception is itself unconsciously tinted? If our own perspective is not objective, but shaped — by the subconscious, by habit, by fear, by media, by speed?
Especially in an era of accelerating technology, where AI makes decisions and our ecological foundations are under threat, the question arises: How do we make decisions when we fail to see how selective our perception truly is? How do we shape the future when we believe we are in control — yet overlook how deeply we are part of the very system we observe?
This is affection consists of a vertically oriented LED panel before which more than 360 ultralight carbon rods are suspended from a taut nylon thread. Their tips are coated with magnetic paint, forming a fragile, latent order within the space.
Embedded in the frame of the panel are 52 modified push-pull magnets. They do not activate according to a program but seemingly at random — tilting individual rods, shifting the composition, generating patterns that emerge and dissolve within moments.
Yet this “randomness” is precisely organized chance: the magnets are controlled by an external system that draws upon real physical data as input — minute fluctuations in cosmic background radiation, electromagnetic fields in the room, and even the presence of the viewers.
This means: you alter the work simply by existing. Order is not predetermined — it happens. What becomes visible is the outcome of a relationship — not only between the work and the world, but between the work and its observer.
Thus, This is affection materializes uncertainty — creating a space for ambiguity, potentiality, and resonance. Like in quantum mechanics, where properties manifest only in the moment of interaction, its appearance remains fleeting — not because it withdraws, but because it is relational.
The movement of the rods is barely audible, almost invisible — yet just enough to destabilize the surface. Form becomes event, order becomes moment.
This is affection is therefore not a narrative, but an offering: a physically perceptible thought figure for that which escapes our control — and, precisely through that elusiveness, becomes a carrier of meaning.