4 years ago on this day we took the step from miniature model to large scale beast and started tweaking what was to become the biggest wave pendulum in the world. …and we’re still tweaking! đ
If our backers only would have known how far away from the promised result we were the first time we tested it… To be honest it really looked like shit and nothing worked. It is a hard call to make to pick up the phone after years of work and say: “We blew your money and it all went down the toilet. Sorry” Instead, we kept pushing and after another 6 months and a constant covering of what seemed to be never ending and (VERY high) unexpected additional costs, she was there in all her beauty. Like she had never done anything else. I remember crying the first time we released her and the wave appeared with a perfect shape, with the music and the lights turned on. It was all in sync and it looked so natural, almost like there would be no other option for it than to do just that exact thing that it was designed for. To reveal the mathematics of nature and perform it’s hypnotizing dance. I was swept away by it’s grace. I knew that it would be a beautiful thing, but to be standing just underneath it and watch it happen, all by itself was so much more on a deeper level than I could ever have imagined. At that moment it felt worth so much more than all the effort that had gone into creating it, even though on the paper or in a budget it would have looked horribly wrong. I am so glad I didn’t know about that before I got started – that way I would never have gotten down that rabbit hole.
I guess that is the dilemma with how the bureaucratic structure looks when you create art. Everybody wants to know what the finished result will be before you even get started. And how much it will cost. And for whom it will be performed, the target group. For how many? For how long? And what will the message be? The thing is; art needs to be wild. Without restrains it can lead us to somewhere we haven’t been before. That is when it can blow us away for real and jolt our hearts. We need to allow it to go into the dark, unknown. Art needs to get lost and if it ever comes back it will tell us the story.
