Ambiguous Object
A text piece written in pencil on the walls of an otherwise bare gallery. The words read:
Here is a ambiguous object. Let us suppose that by an act of imaginative will we can stand at the centre of this object, such that its centre is our centre, and when looked at from within it has a solid, resilient, immovable core, and an increasing evanescent exterior. This core is our core, and this exterior is our exterior. From this viewpoint it has something of the quality of a Gas Giant, the core of which is frozen with the dazzling weight of compressed energy. There is no surface to such a planet, but rather its substance becomes more and more rarified away from the core into the reaches of space.
Let us now suppose that by an act of imaginative will we can move ourselves away from the centre of this object and take a place at some remove, in the immensity of outer space. Now its centre is not our centre, its core is not our core and its exterior is not our exterior. Here where we now stand, weightless and vacuous, the substantiality of this object is reversed. When seen from the outside it appears solid, its outermost regions forming a solid carapace around contents which are forever hidden from us. From this viewpoint its core is invisible, transcendent, eldritch, the subject of speculation and disbelief. Its outer skin, on the other hand, is comfortingly visible, presenting itself to the touch of the eye like the knee of a lover, or the cheek of one’s own face.