Allan McCollum, Fulgurite Project 1998, using lightning to create glass

Installation: University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, Florida, 1998. Over 10,000 casts of an
actual fulgurite produced by lightning triggered by the artist at the International Center for Lightning Research at
Camp Blanding, Florida.

"It's hard to imagine how memory and meaning could exist without language — both are always only available through some sort of representation. I imagine that objects having meaning — artworks, keepsakes, people, stones — could not exist for us without their "literature." How could a bolt of lightning, lasting only for the tiniest fraction of a second, be understood otherwise? Events this brief will always evade our synapses — and their existence will always only exist after the fact, amongst one's representations. Perhaps a true picture of how an artwork has meaning could be constructed if the literature supporting the artwork was put on display at the same time, along with it. The Petrified Lightning project was created to explore this idea — an exhibition to enact the "event" as always already absent, with the residue and the meaning always already appearing in its place."
-- Allan McCollum

to read more about this project click here