Sculptural Investigation Using Bouncy Balls
Salzamt, Linz 2011. bb15, Linz, 2012.
An project investigating space using bouncy balls and bouncy balls using space.
Bunn says, "Looking for a way to strip my practice down to a simple focal point, I stumbled upon a bouncy ball during a stay in France and thought that I had found the answer. When I attached the first bb to a balloon I knew I was onto something."
Bunn spent several months at the Salzamt in Linz, discovering the types of ways he could present bouncy balls to an audience. He made some machines, found out some special types of bounces, started to develop obstacles to interrupt the path of the balls, made a model of the room for a micro examination of the angles and did a lot of bouncing. The above video is about that time.
The project was developed further for an exhibition at bb15 in June 2012, which he then turned into the following video. Both of these videos were made because Bunn struggled to capture the excitement of these very physical works using photos. Naturally, once he started editing, they turned into something else entirely...
This work explores containment in open and closed systems and includes several interconnected forays into interaction, all revolving around bouncy balls. These interactions often involve putting the viewer into that strange, skew-kneed position one adopts when unsure which way to move - the bouncy ball being caught up in a complicated spin and moving too erratically to catch easily.
The work is documented through a series of inter-related video clips, which have taken on a life of their own: engaging with the struggle to document 'live' sculptures; dealing with failure; investigating the power of the edit and it's function in an art video; exploring 'entertainment'.
