Self-Portrait as a Histogram (Prayer Beads), 2009

Aluminum, stainless steel, and wooden beads

4” x 6” x 8” (10 cm x 15 cm x 20 cm)

What we experience about our world ultimately comes in indivisible packets, the quanta. I wanted to carry this idea over to the tactile experience. I created a representation of the central part of my own face with an array of pins carrying stacks of beads of variable height. The stacks’ height corresponds to the height of the facial form at that point to make the image of a simplified representation of my face. The over 6,000 beads on the pins are evocative of an abacus and reference the binary character of single indivisible ‘quantum events’ through the stacking process. This highlights the essential role the concept of information plays in quantum physics.