Elicitation (Cassiopeia A)

2021

3D Print SLS with Nylon PA12, placed on Bienfang gridded paper
Installation view, Templon, Paris

 

Elicitation (Cassiopeia A) is a three-dimensional visualization, produced from NASA’s open-source files, of a dead star’s remains from a stellar explosion that occurred 11000 light-years away. While the star, the youngest known supernova remnant in our Milky Way Galaxy blew up 11,000 years ago, its light reached Earth in the late 1600s.

In its death, Cassiopeia A is said to have ejected about 10,000 Earth masses worth of sulfur, 20,000 Earth masses of silicon, 70,000 times Earth-mass of iron, and oxygen equivalent to about three times the mass of the Sun, releasing into the universe the vital ingredients of life. The sculpture is placed on a stack of Bienfang gridded paper, the drawing surface for Kallat’s year-long project Integer Studies (drawing from life).