Canoe
2000
kinetic installation
dimensions: 7.5m x 2m x 2m
materials: aluminum stock, motor, mechanical elements, paddle, 2x4 stock, hardware, grommets, rubber, polyethylene sheet, steel, custom electronics, battery, water.
Our world is rife with systems: systems for ordering and remembering, systems for creating and destroying, systems for communication, transportation, entertainment, devotion... it goes on and on. Undeniably, the greatest devisor of systems is Nature, itself, forever finding new ways of creating and replicating order where there was none before.
— Norman T. White (from exhibition text for Manual, Koffler Centre for the Arts, Toronto, Canada, 2006)
Canoe is reminiscent of both a boat and a bridge. Draped across a 7.5 m long structure, heavy transparent film filled with water provides a channel for a paddling mechanism which tracks hypnotically along the gunwales in distantly anthropomorphic motions. A solar power version was shown outdoors in Dawson, Yukon in Northern Canada in summer of 2006.
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