Generosity Generator
This Generosity Generator was conceived as a healing machine along the lines of my previous installations, a speculative machine with projected functionality. Creating an opportunity for viewers to extend their sense of generosity and empathy can raise questions of how our behavior patterns affect others personally and globally. Recent studies have shown that most mammals are innately empathic to other herd members, suggesting that empathy is “hardwired” into brain function and not a learned response.
The Generosity Generator invites the participant to project generosity by placing their hands over either of the two embedded sets of hands in the tabletops. Participants can evoke a sense of connection to individuals or groups, and “send” this connection off through the machine. The generosity is carried through the machine and out into the environment and world. The residue of this process is manifested as little sweets offered in appreciation at the rear of the machine. Participants can help themselves to one from either of the two receptacles in the terminus.
The generator offers a choice of two possible areas of engagement, the honey table and the salt table. The two substances are employed as conductors for the insubstantiality of empathic movement. Both rely on alchemical processes (heat, distillation, imagination, transformation) to absorb the fugitive quality of the generated generosity.
Honey has been traditionally used in healing both topically and internally. Neither solid nor liquid, it is used here as a vehicle for movement and communication.
In ancient texts salt has been associated with the idea of a binding covenant between people. It is an electrolyte, a good conductor of electricity. Salt is also necessary to the proper functioning of the body.
The word empathy (einfuling, literally “in feeling”) was first used to describe the appreciation of a work of art by a spectator through projecting their personality into the object of contemplation. It is the power of understanding objects or emotions outside ourselves, and suggests the process of artmaking and viewing in addition to interpersonal relationships.
References to dendrites in the rear of the piece suggest the function of serotonin released in the giver’s brain during acts of generosity, emphasizing its connection to one’s own body. The dissemination of the generated generosity spreads from this area. Network theory has most recently been employed in assessing terrorist cells. References to network theory are used in two of the drawn areas to track interpersonal relationships in several social groups in which I am involved. Pill casings connected to form the shape of Third World countries and cell structures question the availability of medications for the poor and disenfranchised, and the over-usage of mood altering medications.
Circulating through the physiological to the interpersonal to the global, the Generosity Generator is intended to point out some of the pathways and obstacles to propagating generous behavior. The rarity of such behavior in world events, and the tenuousness of many international relationships highlight the aspiration of the Generosity Generator to function as a device for the extension of empathy.
Audrey Goldstein
September 2006
The Generosity Generator was made with the support of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Artist Trust Resource Fund, to whom the artist is grateful.
The Generosity Generator invites the participant to project generosity by placing their hands over either of the two embedded sets of hands in the tabletops. Participants can evoke a sense of connection to individuals or groups, and “send” this connection off through the machine. The generosity is carried through the machine and out into the environment and world. The residue of this process is manifested as little sweets offered in appreciation at the rear of the machine. Participants can help themselves to one from either of the two receptacles in the terminus.
The generator offers a choice of two possible areas of engagement, the honey table and the salt table. The two substances are employed as conductors for the insubstantiality of empathic movement. Both rely on alchemical processes (heat, distillation, imagination, transformation) to absorb the fugitive quality of the generated generosity.
Honey has been traditionally used in healing both topically and internally. Neither solid nor liquid, it is used here as a vehicle for movement and communication.
In ancient texts salt has been associated with the idea of a binding covenant between people. It is an electrolyte, a good conductor of electricity. Salt is also necessary to the proper functioning of the body.
The word empathy (einfuling, literally “in feeling”) was first used to describe the appreciation of a work of art by a spectator through projecting their personality into the object of contemplation. It is the power of understanding objects or emotions outside ourselves, and suggests the process of artmaking and viewing in addition to interpersonal relationships.
References to dendrites in the rear of the piece suggest the function of serotonin released in the giver’s brain during acts of generosity, emphasizing its connection to one’s own body. The dissemination of the generated generosity spreads from this area. Network theory has most recently been employed in assessing terrorist cells. References to network theory are used in two of the drawn areas to track interpersonal relationships in several social groups in which I am involved. Pill casings connected to form the shape of Third World countries and cell structures question the availability of medications for the poor and disenfranchised, and the over-usage of mood altering medications.
Circulating through the physiological to the interpersonal to the global, the Generosity Generator is intended to point out some of the pathways and obstacles to propagating generous behavior. The rarity of such behavior in world events, and the tenuousness of many international relationships highlight the aspiration of the Generosity Generator to function as a device for the extension of empathy.
Audrey Goldstein
September 2006
The Generosity Generator was made with the support of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Artist Trust Resource Fund, to whom the artist is grateful.
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