Infinity Lines, from 1999

When a straight line is made over three dimensional form, it can join up and become continuous, like a circle or infinity line. When it is made over interior archectural form, it is a drawing which can be occupied by viewers, and which varies in shape according to the nature of the particular architecture, and the position from which it is seen. Infinity Lines are the product of the interaction of a straight line with architectural form: the line's initial direction is arbitrary and thereafter is determined by the planes and shape of the architecture, which enable the line to eventually join its starting point and become continuous. If the planes of the architecture were laid out flat, as one plane, the line would be straight, though broken and discontinuous. The continuity of the line is made by the three dimensionality of the architecture. The shape of each Infinity Line is determined by the particular architecture in which it is made and the particular direction in which it is started.

Young Street

This process was discovered in 1997 while making a newspaper line drawing on the interior of the external wall of a vacant office suite in Young Street Sydney. The AMP Leasing Manager in Sydney very kindly gave free access to this office suite for the period between leases. The office suite contained 5 rooms and a foyer. The many internal walls meant the whole newspaper-line could not be seen from any one position. The measurements of the line were later imported into a 3D modelling program enabling Horst Kiechle in Sydney Vislab to produce an image of the whole line as it would appear from positions such as outside the front door of the building 7 floors below.

Horizon (Orange)

This process was also used to make an Infinity Line in yellow masking tape in the upstairs gallery of Orange Regional Gallery in May 2000, with "Horizon (Orange)", and again in wallpaper lining and red oxide powder in "Meeting Lines" in the Otago Polytechnic School of Art Foyer Gallery, while on an Artists at Work residency. (The line itself was made by students Abby Little, Debi thompson, Jane Venis and Ewa Zlotkowska).

Image Horst Kiechle

The measurements of this line were imported into a 3D modelling program by Horst Kiechle in Sydney Vislab, enabling the whole line to be visualised from 'real' positions on the campus. Four of these were included in the 130th Birthday Show in the Foyer Gallery in October 2000.
http://www.tekotago.ac.nz/art/birthday/Australia/roberts.html
These show the shape of the line as it would appear, if it could be seen, from 4 different positions within the campus:
top: view from a position 72 metres above the Foyer gallery
2nd: view standing on nearby corner of Reigo and Albany Streets, Dunedin
3rd from the Artists at Work office, which is on the floor directly above the Art Theory Office.
4th: view standing on Anzac Avenue bridge over the Leith Stream.
To identify these positions on the campus, go to
http://www.tekotago.ac.nz/art/SiteMap&Index/SteMap_Index.htm
(The Foyer Gallery is located in the Administration area).

Green

...and again in red masking tape in Green, a collaborative show with Lesley Giovanelli and Toni Warburton in Kudos gallery, Paddington, Sydney, in November 2000.
http://www.cofasa.student.unsw.edu.au/1999-2002/kudos/kudos_archive_2000/green_oct/green00.html

hear the artist talking about infinity lines :

http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Cosmos/francais/html/theskythestarsandyou.html

(After designing a 3D computer-modelling program to side-step the physical process of drawing the line, Horst quickly discovered that the lines only occasionally joined up to create a continuous infinity line, requiring the 'infinity-lines' to become 'straight-lines' instead.)