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El Proyecto Tumble Truss/ The TumbleTruss Project

by Dennis L. Dollens
Galeria H2O, Barcelona, 2000,
48 pp, illus. Trade.
ISBN: 84-921103-4-1.

Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen

Hogeschool Gent,
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium.


stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be

For people like me who have never seen a desert unless on screen or television, tumbleweed seems to be more of a stage prop to dramatize the emptiness of a deserted town than a real plant. Its huge, rolling balls bearing seeds and spreading it over wide areas don't make sense to us. How can a plant be nomadic? How can it survive by leaving its roots and its supply of extremely scarce water? It is a freak of nature, along with lung fish, marsupials and cyanobacteria.

For Dennis Dollens, however, this beautiful and highly specialised plant holds the clue to some intricate questions concerning the strength of building materials under different conditions of stress. Its seemingly randomly arching and intertwining branches defy all common knowledge about stress-resistant structures. Its elegant cell patterns and its unique life cycle are adapted to survive in an extremely hostile environment. In its dead state — when the balls actually tumble and travel — it carries life. In its live and growing stage — when it has enough water to support its biochemistry -- it is already preparing for death.

Taking branches and seeds from the tumbleweed as his starting point, Dollens has created digital prints on silk and spinnaker cloth, small 3D models, VRML images and installations. Consistently with his original idea, none of his final works is entirely rigid or two-dimensional. The cloth of the prints allows the print to undulate and almost respond to the shape of the image, the digital forms can be manipulated, rotated and transformed according to the needs of the viewer.

In this book-project, Barcelona-based Galleria H2O and Dollens have worked together to catch some of the spirit of the TumbleTruss project on paper. Its limited size is no obstacle to realize its objectives. Actually, the book itself, text as well as images, has the appearance of an ongoing, undulating, transformable, project. Finished and unfinished at the same time. Final as well as preliminary, it introduces Dollens' work as well as summarising it.


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