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A becoming of liquid

In Hannah Rowan’s work Triple Point, ice melts slowly inside hanging glass vessels. Like Olafur Eliasson’s giant melting ice blocks, the melted pool of ice acts as a material index. Having become a diferent state and shape but staying materially the same, it is an index of its former self. But Rowan’s sculptures operate in another, more interesting, way. As the ice inside melts, it cools the container and surrounding air, causing droplets of condensation to form on the outside of the glass. This water accumulates, pools together and then submits to gravity as droplets falling to the ground.

Whilst it might appear to the casual onlooker that the glass vessel is merely leaking out of its pointed base, this is not the case. It is not the same water dripping down the outside as is held inside. Liquid water is forming on the inside of the glass interface and, by a transfer of heat, is directly instigating the formation of liquid water on the outer side. On both sides water is becoming a liquid. Inside, solid ice melts to become liquid. Outside, gaseous water vapour condenses out of air. What is happening on the outside of the glass is not a transfer of image, form or matter from the interior, but rather a copy (albeit reversed) of the process that is taking place on the inside. A materially-mediated index of a state change - an index of becoming of liquid form.

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