Build your own cardboard adventure
One man’s trash might be another’s art project, as showcased in the Exploratorium’s new summerlong show, “WildCard.”
Featuring work from the Cardboard Institute of Technology artist collective, the San Francisco art and science museum is housing an intricate installation made almost entirely of reused cardboard. Aside from some electronic enhancements and the spare usage of wood as a skeletal structure in a few sections, the recycled universe is constructed solely with hot glue and box cutters.
The structure, while not necessarily massive within the Exploratorium’s larger space, only seems to expand upon closer examination.
A bat cave serves as an entrance, leading into a large, electronically powered wooden helix, known as the “world-builder.” Imitating a tunnel-boring machine, the spiral construction turns constantly, with mini cardboard cities attached, hovering over a glowing blue lake.
Other parts of the installation follow a river, its sides decorated with whimsical worlds unto themselves. Cardboard ladders lead up to village huts, a cave contains shaman-esque figures huddled around a fire, a paddle wheel turns alongside the “WildCard Casino.”
“It’s kind of like a ‘choose your own adventure,’ in a way,” says CIT artist Jesse Wilson. “The story starts to develop the more you build.”
Wilson and six other members of CIT, a small collection of artists who band together to create these sprawling cardboard projects, began constructing with little forethought other than knowing the dimensions of the installation space. The mythological entities of the exhibition sprang up as the cutting and gluing went along.
The improvised building process is part of the takeaway of the installation — the accessibility of detailed worldbuilding, especially with a simple, recycled material.
“We’re in such a singleservice kind of world now, and we don’t think of the longevity of things,” Wilson says. “It’s a real good metaphor for garbage and waste. If we did this with all trash, would there be as much garbage? Everything has the potential to be utilized in another way.”
Ideally, the show seeks to inspire visitors “to go home and create their own worlds, to imagine their own new cities in their backyards or under their kitchen table or in their garage,” says Robyn Higdon, director of museum experience. To further encourage this, on the side of the exhibition is a station for visitors to craft cardboard constructions of their own, and the adjacent cafe will be adorned throughout the summer with new creations.
Despite the simple materials, constructing the installation was arduous. The artists created the majority of the installation in three weeks in the Marin Headlands, then transported the pieces to the Exploratorium and rebuilt and constructed the final version there.
But smaller worlds can still be easily built.
“If you run out of material, you don’t have to go to a store to buy it,” Wilson says. “You just have to go to the front of a store and go through — well, maybe not go straight through — their garbage.”