Scott Hessels

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Scott Hessels, also known as Damaged Californians, is an experimental artist who, for the last decade, has been working with film, video, web, broadcast, music, print, and performance.

The Image Mill is an award winning public sculpture. As you can see. The sculpture is made up of a mill that spins as water falls into it creating a sort of picture show of a horse galloping. This fast paced mill is almost like that of a flip book or flash photography. The structure stands at twelve feet tall. Using two wheels, the shutter action is created. One wheel has the horse animation while the other spins the opposite direction and has slits in it.

The water is one of the main keys in how this sculpture works. Without the water, there would be no motion. Quite literally the water creates fluidity in the motion or the gallop. Rhizome suggests that Hessels may have invented a sort of cinema for the future calling it "environmentally responsible".

The mill is a metaphor for the autobile industry. The horse was one of the first forms of transportation in the world. Using the mill, which is also a large part of history, the structure transports your mind. The mill is shaped as a wheel much like that of a car or train. In the short cinema that Hessels designed the horse begins galloping and then falls and then continues on again. The main metal work was done in Michigan where the automobile industry first took off.

I find Scott Hessels to be an interesting look at new media. He has a different eye than the other artists I have looked at so far. The structure of The Image Mill is in and of itself a wonderful thing for the eye to see. When the animation and motion created by a natural resource takes its place, there is a sense of magic to what is being shared by all of the viewers. It is no wonder he won the ArtPrize in 2009.

Other works by Scott Hessels prove to be just as amazing as this invention. He is definitely a legend to the new media world.

http://rhizome.org/object.php?49467
http://www.dshessels.com/