Created in 2000 for the Kimberley Festival in Norfolk, a blue ‘neon’ ring revolves on a vertical axis, containing an expanding and contracting pink and green ring bouncing inside it. The sculpture is made from electroluminescent wire with a complex control box developed with an electronics engineer in the US. This material had just been invented and I had been asked by a serious UK company if I could think of any commercial applications for it. I couldn’t, but I did want to play with it, and so I created something playful, with spinning rings and bouncing rings like a big toy. What I had created reminded me of something from the lab of an old Frankenstein movie; the machinery that would bring the monster to life and these two themes were fitting for the dance floor. I made two in the end, one to go either side of the DJ, which worked well as being representative of the tracks being ‘cooked up’ on the two turntables for the dance floor.
This ‘EL’ material has since become synonymous with the Burning Man Festival in Nevada, where lots of other incredible artists have also played with it, creating jaw dropping night time sculpture.