Back in 2009, I was just starting to deepen my interest in the animacy of objects and the ways in which they interact with us. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was trying to make, but I knew I wanted to make a thing that was both soft, welcoming, comfortable, but also hard, skeletal, unnerving. I was learning about Otto Piene and the Zero group, and I was fascinated by Freud’s ideas around the uncanny, the notion that things could be so “heimlich” – literally “home-like” or “close to home” – that they tip over and become uncanny, uncomfortable. I wanted to really understand that territory, which for me means making, working, using the tools of creative inquiry to unpack and investigate.

This was the first thing I ever made with steel; I learned to weld because it was the only material that made sense for the kinds of juxtaposition I was after. Also, it sounded fun to 20-year-old me. It was the right choice, though, because using steel rods allowed me to build structure without density, and to build intuitively, following an internal set of rules about angles and joins but letting the form grow naturally.

The interaction is simple; a proximity sensor connected to a kind of basic kinetoscope. As you approach, it begins to quietly whirr and spin faster, illuminating the outer fabric layer in a strobe-like pattern.