09. Calibre
The word calibre belongs to the language of measurement. It indicates a precise, verifiable, standardised dimension. It defines the relationship between an object and the system that makes it reproducible.
It defines the relationship between an object and the system that makes it reproducible.
A calibre does not describe a form. It establishes its scale.
In technical language the term is associated above all with firearms and projectiles. The calibre determines a compatibility. It defines an exact relationship between different parts of the same system. It is a measure that leaves no room for approximation.
In the cycle, the calibre indicates the size of the starting cube, expressed in millimetres. Calibre 100: a ten-centimetre cube. Calibre 75: seven and a half centimetres.
The first examples date from 2018: Erratico accidentale calibro 100 n. 1 and Erratico accidentale calibro 100 n. 2, 3D prints in PLA. The following year the calibre drops to 75 and the examples become twelve: 12 tetracaidecaedri irregolari calibro 75.
The same rule holds across vastly different scales: the centimetre and a half of Gioia erratica, in white gold, and the two metres sixty of Souvenir di montagna at Molino Nuovo.
The number does not describe the finished polyhedron.
After the eight truncations the object no longer has a single dimension: it changes depending on the direction in which it is measured, just as its profile changes depending on where one stands to look at it. The calibre does not measure what is left. It measures what was there before.
It is the memory of the mass from which the form was obtained.
A natural boulder has no calibre.
No measure precedes it, no system makes it compatible with anything else, no one can say from what initial volume it was obtained. Its form keeps no memory of a measurable origin, because that origin does not exist: there is only a rock face from which it broke away.
The calibre is therefore the only thing that the constructed erratic possesses and the real erratic cannot have. Not the form, which is indistinguishable. Not the planes, not the edges, not the unstable footing. The number.
And the word remains.
To call the measure of a stone a calibre is to bring into the landscape a vocabulary that belongs to munitions. It is the same lexicon already encountered in the camouflaged defence works along the Albula road, and it will return in the slits and in the Maloja fortress. In this territory the mountain has long been thought of in military terms. The cycle neither denounces nor celebrates this: it makes use of it.
Translation: Archivio Umberto Cavenago
Different shapes and different calibres, 3D prints in PLA
Erratico accidentale calibro 100 n. 1, 2018
3D print in PLA, 10 × 10 × 10 cm
3D print in PLA, 10 × 10 × 10 cm
Gioia erratica, 2019
18K white gold and neodymium magnet, 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 cm
18K white gold and neodymium magnet, 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 cm
12 tetracaidecaedri irregolari calibro 75, 2019
3D print in PLA, 7.5 × 7.5 × 7.5 cm each
3D print in PLA, 7.5 × 7.5 × 7.5 cm each