What is it?
Interactive: Firmly press the colorful buttons to reduce the problem set.
One of the buttons is the answer. When you find it, the machine will reset.
When making this artwork, I was thinking about the process of trying to build novel detectors for subatomic particles or dark matter—designing, constructing, and operating machines that have never been made before. What is it like to invest years of effort in an instrument that doesn’t end up finding the thing you were searching for?
The delapidated labels, which have no particular meaning in this context, were unused handmade asset tags from the Yates compressor hall at the former Homestake gold mine (now the home of the Sanford Underground Research Facility). These tags were used to label the air-powered drilling tools used within the mine.
