Mixing installation art and chemistry, he's taken an entire abandoned apartment near London's Elephant & Castle and transformed it into a gemstone. Covering the inside with blue copper sulphate crystals, he's created an other-worldly, mineralized, glinting mirror of an everyday apartment. Jewels literally glowing from the ceiling and lining the floors...
After reinforcing the walls and ceiling and covering them in plastic sheeting, 80,000 litres of a copper sulphate solution was poured in from a hole in the ceiling. After a few weeks the temperature of the solution fell and the crystals began to grow. The remaining liquid was pumped back out and sent for special chemical recycling.
Seizure
Roger Hiorns:
Tags: art, mad science
Current Music: Icky Blossoms -- Deep in the Throes ♬
6 Responses:
This is a fucking disaster. Each and every person walking out of there slowly spreads readily dissolvable toxic heavy metal dust throughout the city (unless visitors are given overshoes, and there are none in the video). Worse, they breathe that stuff when they are in. A couple of ways to handle copper contamination exist, but the best one is to keep it in the vat, not to pump an apartment in a residential area chock-full with it.
Looks really pretty, though. Continuing the theme of typical science fair projects made larger, the next one probably will be a kilowatt potato battery assembly.
The article did say they gave them boots, FWIW.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Do you want giant spiders? Because this is how you get giant spiders.
Well played, sir.
It looks like a sleestak cave.
That is amazing