Antony Hall

↪Perpetual Puddle Vortex No.3 2012. Installation detail. Plinth, enclosed mechanisms, ink water and oil.

↪Perpetual Puddle Vortex No.3 2012. Installation detail. Plinth, enclosed mechanisms, ink water and oil.

↪Perpetual Puddle Vortex No. 4, 2012. Installation detail. Plinth, enclosed mechanisms, ink water and oil.

Perpetual Puddle Vortex
Experiment No. 3, 2012. Installation detail. Plinth, enclosed mechanisms, ink water and oil. A seemingly incidental spillage reveals a spiraling vortex at its center. The puddle appears to be constantly pulled into a void, though it never reduces.

"Antony Hall’s series of experiments catches our attention, in particular “Perpetual Puddle Vortex: Experiment No. 3”, in which a flat dark pool of black ink visibly and audibly drains away through a hole in its centre. We wait to see if it will empty. We wait some more, yet the pool remains full to the plinth’s brim. A technical feat, yes, but accomplished with a filmic brilliance that lends the piece a hypnotic quality. In this piece it was not the puddle that resembles life, but the plinth and the gallery space; drinking and replenishing the endless fluid" Tim Howard

A seemingly incidental spillage reveals a spiraling vortex at its centre. The puddle appears to be constantly pulled into a void though it never reduces. Closer inspection reveals a microcosms of complex behaviors. The perpetual puddle vortex draws in fluid and air, and re-circulates it back in to the puddle, so the puddle never disappears. Underneath the puddle is a vortex generating device, this does not simply spin the puddle; the liquid spirals down a hole, but magically the puddle never reduces.

Over the day the puddle produces a continual array of ever changing patterns, in foam, or a thin layer of floating oil. The work changes according to temperature and moisture levels and light. Again the understanding of surface tension is essential to this work. The tabletop finish is highly hydrophobic, thus maintaining the bead like edge of the puddle. The colours are created though diffraction, according to the thickness of the oil, which depends on the speed of the flow in the puddle; so the colours change as the fluid accelerates towards the center of the vortex.