"New York-based artist Jonathan Schipper’s ‘Detritus’ is an infinitely dynamic environment composed of salt, digital machinery, and hot water bathing. The immersive installation is made up of twelve tons of salt stretching from end to end of the gallery floor, while a metallic mechanism suspended from the ceiling by cables ascends and descends onto the mineral plane. By varying the length of the four tethers, the device moves around the room, lowering itself onto the surface where it extrudes and builds three-dimensional, abstracted salt forms from layers upon layers of the material. The resulting mass arrangement revealed from the heaps of fine grains simulate architectural landscapes, and city skylines — representations of man-made objects. As part of the exhibition, viewers have the option of observing the salt sculptures’ fabrication from the comfort of a hot tub nearby, forcing an inevitable destruction of the builds as they enter and exit the pool of water."

Learn more here: https://www.designboom.com/art/detritus-builds-salt-sculptures-as-visitors-watch-from-a-hot-tub-10-21-2013/