Mappings

0ablackwhit3f9959f966.jpgBalint Bolygo’s Mappings is a 2005 kinetic sculpture which utilizes the core aspects of the Bolygo’s ethos as an artist. In the sculpture/installation two pens rigged to outlying pendulums transcribe the motions taken by the pendulums onto a rotating sphere, or blank globe. Viewers can interact with the pendulums, pushing them to behave more erratically, or calming them to induce smoother lines. The resulting process essentially becomes the earth mapping its own forces onto a replica of itself, a truly interesting portrayal of mapmaking that encourages the viewer to consider the mass our planet, whose gravitational pull directs the motion of the pendulum and creates the drawings.

Trace

[video src=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3XWQzz_JWs align: left height: 200]Bolygo’s take on the self portrait, Trace, is a 2008 sculptural device by the artist, which connects conventional ideas of sculpture, especially of the human form, to contemporary notions of topography and transcription. The piece involves a rotating cast of the artist's head traversed by an extension of a complex but completely mechanical device, which records depth onto a circular piece of paper rotating at the same rate as the head. The artist's own head is then transformed into a compelling topographical map of itself under rotation. The resulting image is noticeably a head, but a heavily distorted one, appearing almost like an image from a spirograph, an evolving concentric diagram of recorded depth.