The Rubber Solution
2018
installation
variable arrangement
“To one lb of salt water taffy add one heaping tsp polyurethane foam, one cake crumbled yeast. Mix till smooth, allow to rise. Then pour into saucepan over one cup cracked rice with one cup water. Add topping of molasses. Boil till lid lifts and says ‘Qurlp’.”
- Disney Special Effects Department Recipe for Flubber, as published in Time Magazine in 1961
As a substance that oozes between fiction and reality, Flubber has made numerous appearances in literature and cinema between 1942 and 1997. Across these various manifestations, Flubber has performed a variety of roles. It has been an artificial rubber, a children’s toy, a super-fuel, a substance to control the weather, and a sentient being. Between its conceptual transformations, the story of Flubber is directly linked to questions of materiality and form.
Today, Flubber is most popular as a substance of domestic play. The performance of this play is no longer in just the handling of the material, but is also embedded in the process of its making – in playing the role of the inventor. Following how-to-make-Flubber videos available on YouTube, one can now easily create Flubber using common household ingredients.
The Rubber Solution draws from the recipes available in these videos to produce various site-responsive and context-specific sculptural arrangements featuring Flubber in three distinct colours (the colours in which it has fictionally appeared) contained in commercially available Ziploc bags.
In their presentation, the sculptures are usually placed in relation to artefacts from Flubber’s merchandising history. In the past these have included a McDonalds Happy Meal Flubber Toy and sheet music for ‘The Flubber Song’ by the Sherman Brothers.
2018
installation
variable arrangement
“To one lb of salt water taffy add one heaping tsp polyurethane foam, one cake crumbled yeast. Mix till smooth, allow to rise. Then pour into saucepan over one cup cracked rice with one cup water. Add topping of molasses. Boil till lid lifts and says ‘Qurlp’.”
- Disney Special Effects Department Recipe for Flubber, as published in Time Magazine in 1961
As a substance that oozes between fiction and reality, Flubber has made numerous appearances in literature and cinema between 1942 and 1997. Across these various manifestations, Flubber has performed a variety of roles. It has been an artificial rubber, a children’s toy, a super-fuel, a substance to control the weather, and a sentient being. Between its conceptual transformations, the story of Flubber is directly linked to questions of materiality and form.
Today, Flubber is most popular as a substance of domestic play. The performance of this play is no longer in just the handling of the material, but is also embedded in the process of its making – in playing the role of the inventor. Following how-to-make-Flubber videos available on YouTube, one can now easily create Flubber using common household ingredients.
The Rubber Solution draws from the recipes available in these videos to produce various site-responsive and context-specific sculptural arrangements featuring Flubber in three distinct colours (the colours in which it has fictionally appeared) contained in commercially available Ziploc bags.
In their presentation, the sculptures are usually placed in relation to artefacts from Flubber’s merchandising history. In the past these have included a McDonalds Happy Meal Flubber Toy and sheet music for ‘The Flubber Song’ by the Sherman Brothers.
