Bearing this in mind, I heard about the existence of another formula, a formula to calculate the volume of a human body. Following the calculation, I discovered myself to measure 58,24628375 liters.
Modelling for art classes provided me with another approach to the volume I occupied. Sitting still for hours, I contemplated my surroundings, and the limits between my own body and the ambient air became less clear. I breathed in, breathed out; I filled the room as it filled me. I tried to visualize what my volume would be, as an aerial body, as a sphere of air.
Studies in motionlessness (ed.2/10), 2021, 27 photographs and fineliner on paper, as a model-made supplement to Eadweard Muybridge’s ‘The human figure in motion’
This led me to design a scaled hoop, with which I could blow into a balloon to create this body-proportioned sphere. As I had reached its outlines, I knew this volume to be precisely as big as me; but subjectively, it felt much smaller. Following this method, 27 exhales sufficed to scale a first life-size self-portrait.
This body was a whole, comprised of units, just as the ideal figure of an anatomical man is comprised of eight heads. Subsequently, I calculated the size of a twenty-seventh of my volume, which turned out to be a sphere of 16 cm in diameter.
At last, I placed my twenty-seven breaths in the context where they belonged: the life class I had merged with. Here is the ecstasy I had imagined - rightly scaled:
Studio situation with man among nature, two slides for a steresocope, 2021