Mimoid Installation - ePrints Soton

Contributors:

Dawson, Ian (Artist)
Dawson, Ian (Curator of an exhibition)

Group Contributors:

Type	Name	Cited?
Exhibitors	Coombs, Dan and Lamb, Peter and Rolph, Danny	UNSPECIFIED

Item Type:

Art Design Item - Exhibition/show, Installation, Sculpture

Additional Information:

Mimoid is a term used in a particular section of Stanislav Lem‘s classic science fiction novel Solaris. It describes the ‘plasmatic’ metamorphoses on an alien moon. This passage describes a sea made from a ‘yeasty colloid’, which creates formations that at times resemble ‘a colossal python sluggishly digesting a swallowed mountain’. Massed ranks of waves would converge from all directions and within a few minutes the ocean would produce astonishing imitations of objects. The sea showed most of its frantic activity when stimulated by objects of an unfamiliar origin. In particular it would make grotesque caricatures of machines. Sometimes a ‘copy’ would be the subject of a wild flight of fancy and instead of simplification it would indulge in baroque deviations. Lem describes how the mimoid was also thought to be a degeneration or necrosis, choosing to see the appearance of copies as a dissipation of the life energies of the ocean, whereby the sea is no longer in control of creating original forms. Lem also describes how there was no prospect of communication between the ocean and the moons inhabitants and that the entire process of the mimoid began and ended purely with the reproduction of forms. In this passage Lem confronts the issue of the difference between reproduction and creation All of the works chosen for this exhibition are significant to the metaphor of the mimoid. Limehouse Arts Foundation is a publicly funded contemporary gallery space.

Subjects:

N Fine Arts > NL Exhibition or show
N Fine Arts > NB Sculpture

Divisions:

University Structure - Pre August 2011 > School of Art

Date:

2006

ePrint ID:

157745