(2011) Dimensions variable. 3-D printed plastic carriage, copper wire, dog hair, praying mantis, sheet glass, aluminum, steel, stethoscope parts, vinyl tubing, brass fittings, found sound horn, stainless hardware, pencil on vellum, felt.
Influenced by Borges’ short story, On Exactitude in Science, I made a small-scale 3D print of one of the horse-drawn carriages that carry tourists through Philadelphia. I collected an insect from the gardens where the carriages wait for passengers and named it Trump, after the oldest horse working for the 76 Carriage Company.
I placed Trump on a blank map of Philadelphia, tethered to the carriage by a hair from the tail of my dog, Cleo. The insect moved across the blank map, pulling the tiny white carriage which held a .5mm pencil-lead and left a faint line behind it, recording Trump's route. The map sat on a special glass table with a sensitive stethoscope attached to the underside, capturing the sound of the insect pulling the carriage and amplifying it through the sound horn from an old radio.
These sounds were recorded, stored on sound modules and broadcast through a series of solar-powered FM transmitters, carefully positioned in the city along the route that the insect plotted on the map. A tourist tuning in to the proper frequency could walk through central Philadelphia along the exact route the insect walked on the map simply by moving toward the strongest radio signal.
