We are Water

Drawing from the universal language of the mathematics, astrophysics, Euclidean geometry, the elements, and world religion, Hurst’s work strives to find the common ground in the human experience.

Water is fundamental to humans - as a species, we are made of 50-75% water. In the contemporary world, where people are inwardly focused and strongly divided in opinions on many topics, ‘What is Water’ suggests bubbles rising in water, acting as a symbol for our shared experience. The name of the sculpture comes from a speech, later turned into a book of the same name, by the late American writer David Foster Wallace. Here he highlights the importance of choice in how we see and think about the world around us. If we are able to choose to go beyond our snap judgments, we could see the world in a whole new light, we could see the marvelous possibilities that exist all at once and the universal joys of the human experience. In this speech Foster Wallace remarks that “...if we choose how to think and how to pay attention, it’ll be within our power to see a hot, slow, consumer hell type situation as not only meaningful but sacred.”

With these words, Wallace poetically ties in with Hurst’s fascination with astrophysics through a principle of quantum mechanics called “Von neumann entropy”. The idea that without knowing for certain, the world that we can’t see can possibly be more than one thing at the same time. However far-fetched the possibilities are, they are not impossible. These ‘bubbles’ act as the events within the ‘water’ that is our shared experience. They encourage the viewer to see their world from new vantage points and, in doing so, see the parts of life that connect us all.