Cartesian pineal gland uses Rene Descartes’s hypothesis about the pineal gland as text data and magnetic memory core as a storage device. It magnifies the physicality of data and information by showing intermingled points between intangible data and physical material. By doing so, observers see the rendezvous point where the abstract data and material are mixed together.

The point in Descartes’s speculation about the pineal gland, in short, is that the immaterial mind and material body combine at the pineal gland which is basically a medium between mind and body in his theory. However, the contradiction of this assumption is that the very point where the mind meets matter is composed of physical flesh. This paradoxical claim on the pineal gland from Descartes could be used as an argument that immaterial abstraction is realized by mediation through matter.

Produced with guidances from a Master project class from the University of Arts Bremen

The device transmits a character by a character from texts written by Descartes as an input into the device. The control module converts them to ASCII binary code and sends one bit of data to each memory core. Then generated signals flip the magnetic polarity of memory cores and induce voltage from it. These voltage spikes from the memory core turn on the electronic magnet and magnetic flux around the electromagnet distort laser reflection on the surface.

Specification

Size:
139(width) X 34(depth) X 125(height) CM

Materials:
Aluminum profiles, Aluminum tubes, Threaded rods, Plexiglass, Microcontrollers, Custom designed electro magnets, Ferrite core

Software:
Arduino, C Language

Exhibition:
Water Light Festival(Lab)
(3. May - 21. May. 2023, Neustift, Brixen)

Hochschultage
(1. July - 3. July. 2022, HFK, Bremen)

DIS/PLAY 22: Eight perms for a digital age
(21. May - 26. May. 2022, Dauerwelle, Bremen)