'Boolean Logic' : in BOOLEAN EXPRESSIONS: Contemporary art and mathematical data
- Submitting institution
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University of Ulster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 76464692
- Type
- L - Artefact
- Location
- Cork
- Open access status
- -
- Month of production
- July
- Year of production
- 2015
- URL
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https://ulster.sharepoint.com/:b:/s/REF2021/EfQdVdod6qBLpV_OD8mk9ioBNtyPjoZXC7PSo-CR-d6Xjw?e=YfPjQ9
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
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A - Art, Space & Place
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- Boolean Logic is a sculptural time-based work exploring the relationship between entropy, tipping points, order and chaos which employs Boolean logic to build a structure. The seemingly chaotic sculpture, followed 3 simple rules which O’Beirn devised, following the principal of mathematician George Booles’ Logic Gates. Discovered in 1847 Boole’s Logic Gates (Boole, 1847) now form the bases of modern computing (O'Donnell & Hall, 2006, 76). They provide for multiple inputs but only one output and named to reflect their function, e.g. AND gate, OR gate, NOT gate. O’Beirn’s work starts with a basic and logical set of 3 rules (a. timber touches timber, b. timber touches easel, c. timber cannot touch floor) using a limited range of materials, (60 assorted, numbered salvaged timber lengths, a wooden easel, a pencil, a 25-meter roll of Fabriano paper and the artists’ actions over time). Balancing the timbers O’Beirn mapped the structures evolution, timber by timber, using Venn diagrams. Any fallen or displaced timbers were rebalanced and all effected timbers mapped. This limited and ordered set of parameters result in a visually chaotic sculpture with immanent collapse and failure integral to the process. Precarious stability of this boom bust work was achieved through sheer tenacity. The material choice was informed by a post 2008 economic collapse landscape, considering the inventory of discarded materials that litter abandoned building sites of half built empty ghost estates born of a chronic housing crisis. The research question was threefold; sculptural, scientific and political, where physical forces, material properties and artists time-based actions, dictate the form and aesthetic of the work whilst revealing metaphorical possibilities. O’Beirn sought to put Boole’s logic gates into analogue, sculptural action asking how a simple set of initial conditions can rapidly result in complexity and unpredictable instability (Hall, N., 1991).
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -