Title:
Detergent
(Real imaginary system)
Location: Web-based commission for this website
Launch
Project >
Anders and Kristoffer’s project explores the complex microcosms unearthed
inside a box of ordinary, everyday soap. Inspired by the absurd and irrational
science of Pataphysics, they have created a fantastic new history for this well-known
substance. Eight new scientific bodies and businesses have been born, each with
its own identity, URL and website. They are all very different, but are united
through a similar ambition – the exploration or exploitation of the (until
now) unknown properties of soap and its bubbles. The websites blur the boundaries
between reality and fiction with their accounts of soap’s unique assets,
including its proven medicinal qualities. When you launch the project, a website
is selected at random out of the possible eight, each revealing a very different
impression of this bubbly, magical material.
Detergent (Real imaginary system)
Gazing
deeply into the box of detergent from our local supermarket we see unlimited
potential: many systems of knowledge unfold from the qualities of this familiar
object, creating almost impossible associations. The pseudo-scientific knowledge
with which we are presented, when buying a box of detergent, develops into facts
about lasers made of carrots and spinach, and soap bubbles as a new kind of
medicine.
We perceive science as a place where the fictional and factual become indistinguishable,
and where irrational and mystical knowledge is produced. Our view of science
connects with our experience of the everyday and is exemplified through the
box of detergent. Its smell, texture and colour are a whole series of sensory
experiences. The detergent is surrounded by an entire universe of imagery, such
as waves, vortexes, bubbles and whiteness in general. As such it becomes a significant
part of the everyday mythology through which we see and understand the world.
Our research is based on what we read on the labels of things in the supermarket,
on popular scientific literature and, especially, on the multitude of websites
which contain deliberately misleading or misunderstood scientific facts. We
want to believe everything, all of the conflicting / alternative visions of
the world that these varied sources present us with.
In our laboratory we exchange our eyes for soap bubbles and they feel much better.
With soap synapses instead of our organic ones, we are able to observe with
a new sense of confidence. We simply help each other pull out our old ones and
insert the glittery soap bubbles, caught amidst their graceful flight. Soap
bubbles flow freely in our veins crackling as our blood passes from one of us
to the other, linking us forever.
Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum
April 2005
www.anders-kristoffer.dk
