Source: Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams.
Ray Kinsella is part of Build it and they will come a collaborative project between Paul Laidler and Brendan Reid that refers to architectural practice within a fine art context. The work contains a series of four quotes that have architectural connotations and are printed using rapid prototyping technology to create 3D text-based objects. The 3D printing process is used as device to create a series of self-referential dialogues within the work.
The work:
Kinsella (a crop farmer) is walking through his crop field one evening where he here’s a voice uttering the words ‘If you build it, he will come’. After pondering the meaning of the words Kinsella decides to construct a baseball pitch in his cornfield, despite the financial risks to his farm and family. Not completely assured as to why he is making the pitch the compulsion to do so out ways any thoughts of purpose or economic return for the pitch.
The compulsion to make has many parallels with art and its intended function (to be received by an audience). Toward the end of the film the baseball pitch becomes an attraction as it is deemed that ‘people will come’. Ray Kinsella was the first text piece that started this project and similar to the situation of the charactor Ray Kinsella the work had no intended audience, it was just a feeling that something had to be realised. In this instance the realisation was due to the fact that for the idea to function as an artwork it had to be more than an idea. As an idea the words ‘built and they will come’ remained a solitary and silent voice. For the idea to be ‘heard’ the text requires audience participation, therefore the work refers to itself as an object for exhibition - to physically exist in a space where ‘people will come’.
Also see the work in the exhibition 3D 2D: Object and illusion in Print at Edinburgh Printmakers
View Dr Paul Laidler's profile
