Reduce

In January 2010, I made 2^5 (or 32) sets of my grandma’s molasses cookies spelling the word “REDUCE” for an exhibit at 18 Rabbit Gallery in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  The pun of this project is in the command: REDUCE. It is eaten and it is itself reduced. It plays with viewer participation: does the viewer A) not consume the cookie so as to reduce his/her personal consumption, or B) consume the cookie and reduce the cookies available for others. As the cookies disappear, entropy takes over and the pattern REDUCE becomes an incomprehensible landscape of characters transformed from its original meaning. Both the non consuming viewer and the consuming viewer are tied together in the entrophic landscape. One leaving resources for another to partake. The other eating away at the cliche and in so doing, is fueled to share new observations of the world, to tell the time of now – generating living phrases to effect a meaningful environmental action in the current context. Both the consumer and the non consumer influence each other by their ‘action’ or ‘inaction’ in a shared commons. Together, they transform their surroundings and their understanding by their agency.