REFLECTING POOL

Ken Salter (b. 1962)

Aluminum, glass, plastic, and electronics, including computer, camera, monitor, subwoofer, LEAP hand sensor, TouchDesigner software

2017-ongoing

Cypress College Art Collection

Reflecting Pool screen shot, 2024

REFLECTING POOL is the second machine in Ken Salter’s series titled The Garden of Strange Loops. An artist-engineer, Salter describes the machine as “a digital kaleidoscope that uses video feedback to generate fractal images.” It is as mesmerizing as flickering flames and as thought-provoking as a philosophical proposition.

How does it work? The screen displays a mosaic of replicated patterns. The camera photographs the screen thirty times per second. The photographs are fed back into the on-screen mosaic. The result is a hypnotic vision of ever-changing psychedelic dreamscapes, which participants can ‘conduct’ by moving their hands with delicacy between the motion sensor and the camera.

A philosophical proposition? Reflecting Pool demonstrates emergence. This is a mathematical property where the repeated application of simple rules generates self-organizing systems that are far more complex than the rules themselves.

In computer programming, a “loop” is a sequence of simple rules that repeat until an intended condition is reached. In contrast a “strange loop,” does not progress to an intended condition, but always ends up back where it started – just like the people in this detail from Upstairs and Downstairs, a 1969 lithograph by M.C. Escher.   

Douglas Hofstadter coined the term “strange loop” in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. For Hofstadter, human consciousness is produced by a strange loop in the brain’s network. According to Marcus du Sautoy, Oxford University’s Simonyi professor for the public understanding of science, it may also “be the key to understanding when and whether the fast-evolving AIs we are creating might become conscious.” For Ken Salter, a Humanist and a skeptic who perceives reality from a systems perspective, it suggests that, far from being created by a designing consciousness, the complexity of our universe is the product of a “strange loop.”   

About the artist: With engineering degrees from UC Berkeley and UCLA, Ken Salter’s career has focused on technology, entertainment, and art. For many years he was a Disney Imagineer developing new ride technologies, including the trackless ride vehicles that are now omnipresent. He has also worked as an engineering project manager with artists such as Paul McCarthy, Doug Aitken and Jeff Koons.

At the age of 46, Salter was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. One of the unexpected benefits of Parkinson’s is that, for some people, it can surface previously undiscovered artistic abilities. Ken credits Parkinson’s with awakening his abilities and leading to the creation of Reflecting Pool.

Visit the artist’s website: https://kenneth-salter.com/

Discover more about the artist and how Reflecting Pool works from this video made by the Torrance Art Museum Advocates: