Reverse Pendulum, 2007

     “It’s a way to try to understand the minutia and mechanisms which we don’t usually see with the naked eye,” he explains. Whiddling the narrative down to painstaking detail, they imagine what shapes the stars, microscopic organisms, everyday plant life, and larger rule-based communication systems might take. Ultimately, they have a lot in common. So much for the death of irony!
     The fact that past and present unfold simultaneously in the work almost inspires one to wonder which is more potent: the secret extent to which futurist design imitates the natural, or the often-overlooked means by which science begets artificial creations. Is the spaceship imitating the falcon, or vice-versa? Moreover, while these developmental patterns stay remarkably consistent, there remains an air of mystery as to what’s around the bend, which lends nervous excitement and an increased sense of longing to Caivano’s tale. “The current advances are primitive compared to where we’re clearly headed,” he reasons. “This is why one of the main characters is the embodiment of technology.” While there is certainly an implied discourse, here, on the relationship between the environment and technology, Caivano says, “My hope is that the viewer will question these relationships without romantic or utopian filters.” His uses of dialectical binaries such as “man vs. machine” or “nature vs. technology” and his reduction of complex forms to clean, often black and white drawings forms an almost sardonic commentary on the non-simplicity of these issues. “I believe technology is a projection of our minds and spirit, but sometimes it’s only thought of as tools, so the uses are one dimensional.”