Phase Transition

Sarah Meyohas

Artwork Description:

A black, rubbery form drapes across a mesh pedestal. Like a seal at rest, its body flows down and around the structure until it becomes an electrical cord, plugged into the wall. All organisms run on energy from somewhere. An opening at the top reveals a glass tank where another black form moves—this time liquid. It’s ferrofluid, a liquid containing nanoparticles that responds to magnetic fields, pulled by a magnet underneath programmed to follow a random walk with curves. From the mesh pedestal, four-channel sound emerges, algorithmically linked to the ferrofluid’s movement. The draped black sculpture and the liquid inside create a formal echo: one solid and arrived-at, the other restless and becoming. The viewer encounters both states simultaneously, the way we sometimes catch ourselves thinking and glimpse both the thought and the strange process beneath it. The tank becomes an origin pool where form hasn’t yet committed to being form, and the black rubber drapes down as if it once emerged from that same magnetic fluid, or might dissolve back into it. The work draws influence from neuroscience research, but it isn’t interested in explaining these mechanisms. Instead, it recreates the aesthetic experience of scientific observation: the hum of equipment, the clinical posture of looking down into controlled environments, the beauty of watching something operate at a level just beyond full comprehension.