Crushed headlights

My daily walk always follows the same track, crossed by various bicycle routes through the dunes on to the beach. Mostly deserted in the early morning but quite crowded during sunny days. Some treacherous bends and super fast driving MAMILS (middle-aged-man-in-Lycra) confronted by and mixed with sluggish cyclists. This often leads to small and not so small crashes. And I am always there in the morning, picking up the debris. I collect locking rings, plastic parts and also recently a certain type of crushed LED headlights.

As builder of machines and mechanical toys I'm very fond of scrap and remarkable construction parts. The lost headlights inspired me to make a dark box containing a landscape under a starry sky. After all my machines are not necessarily driven by more or less complex mechanical transmissions, especially this one could be simple, a few doors and an extended steel rod to push the miniature light switch on and off, the batteries accessible from the bottom. It's actually hardly a machine maybe I should call it a demonstration model or boxed scene.

The heaven and stars, planets and hardly visible nebula could be pinched holes with various diameters in the backdrop... a mountainous scene inspired by Nietzsche's walks, Oberengadin, and the village of Sils Maria, St. Moritz Swiss etc.

And also that particular time span 1879 - 1889. The scientific community and a majority of the educated public had just accepted evolution as a fact. Antoine Béchamp with his Microzymian Theory explained certain pathological cases, competing with Louis Pasteur's Germ Theory, Freud, that whole wild age at the basis of how we perceive today's world. I felt absolutely in need of an observer, measurement tools and a cadre.

To be continued.