{"id":11416,"date":"2012-07-05T00:20:28","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T06:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=11416"},"modified":"2025-11-27T08:15:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T15:15:49","slug":"triffids-land-at-leonardo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/triffids-land-at-leonardo\/","title":{"rendered":"Triffids Land at Leonardo"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Philip Beesley’s Hylozoic Veil at The Leonardo in Salt Lake City, photos by Shalee Cooper.<\/p><\/div>\n

Just when you thought Salt Lake was a nice, quiet town, a sculptural installation at The Leonardo will make you think again. Dangling over the foyer like “Olympic Tower\u2019s” demonic sister, “Hylozoic Veil” by Philip Beesley creates a dramatic addition to the museum and more generally, to sculpture in Salt Lake. It also joins an international coterie of triffids threatening world invasion.<\/p>\n

Unlike the protagonists of John Wyndham\u2019s 1951 novel, “Hylozoic Veil” is more subdued, preferring to attach itself to the bowels of the building, rather than traipsing around the city. Extending vertically and horizontally from inside The Leoardo\u2019s roof, a motley crew of materials include plastic fronds, electric lights, vials and suspension wires. Eight diagrams displayed on the top floor explain that these are really \u201cbreathing pores, swallowing actuators, filter cluster drones, and silicon tongue extensions.\u201d Within this circuitry, a \u2018liquid system\u2019 purporting to share properties of living organisms is housed in a network of alembics and ampules. The purpose of these in relation to the rest of the sculpture is unclear, and functions as a gratuitous (though beautifully antiquated) chemistry set.<\/p>\n

This behemoth of gadgetry is linked by a \u2018dense array of microprocessors, sensors and actuator systems\u2019 which lead to a master control board that activates “Hylozoic Veil\u2019s” responsiveness. Manifesting as twitches, ripples, contractions and light bursts, such manoeuvers are prompted by the presence of a visitor. In this way, the work alludes to the riddle of whether a sound is made in the woods, if nobody is there to hear it. “When you walk through this environment,” Beesley explains, “there are arrays of space sensors all the way through which track your movement and know where you are. And they start breathing and rippling all through the environment and it has a kind of a presence which is nearly alive.” Some have likened this to a \u2018giant lung, breathing in and out around visitors.\u2019 How cool this would be if it actually worked. During my visit — eight months after it was first installed — Hylozoic Veil was positively dormant, despite the many kisses I blew. It left me feeling nostalgic for the truly mobile work of Alexander Calder.<\/p>\n

At the heart of many Science Fiction fantasies lies the desire to replicate life, or at the very least, to isolate its essence. Movement has long been the philosopher\u2019s stone of this pursuit, as witnessed by a long line of dolls, automata and robots dating back to the Renaissance. (In fact, it really dates back to the Golem who, activated by divine intervention, became Adam). As roaming houseplants with a ferocious appetite for the British public, triffids belong in this camp too.<\/p>\n