By Mark Dotzler
-Artists Website-
“The Split” 2007, 26″H x 20″W x 18″D (aluminum, physics books, iPod running a countdown timer program, light, shadow) uses the shadow of a “High School Physics” book to represent World Trade Center, Building #7 that fell into its own footprint at free fall speed (6.5 seconds) on the afternoon of September 11, 2001. We were told that fire caused it to fall, but that is impossible and defies the basic Laws of Physics. The title “The Split” has a number of meanings here, but ultimately it refers to a split with reality that occurred on that day (and obviously ever since). It also refers to the split in society…between those who are aware and those who are not (some willfully so – just like the people in this TED Talk).
Referenced in Dr. David Ray Griffin’s book, “Cognitive Infiltration”, as follows:
Another essay, comparing Newton’s laws with George Orwell’s “secret doctrine that 2 + 2 = 4,” [430] says:
Professor Steven Jones found himself forced out of [a] tenured position for merely reminding the world that physical laws, about which there is no dissent whatsoever, contradict the official theory of the World Trade Center Towers’ collapse.[431]
This essay’s author then pointed out that, if NIST’s account of why these buildings collapsed is accepted, “the specifications of design for all skyscrapers ought, in the public interest, to be subjected to major review.” NIST’s account also requires, he added, a revision of the physical laws regarding the behavior of steel that have long been presupposed in the engineering sciences.[432] His point, of course, was that no scientists or engineers believe that these laws need to be revised, so that the contradiction between NIST’s account of the destruction of the World Trade Center, on the one hand, and some elementary principles of physics, on the other – a contradiction that has been expressed by artist Mark Dotzler in a piece of artwork titled The Split – means that all architects and engineers aware of this contradiction should be joining Jones in publicly rejecting NIST’s report.
[430] Matthew T. Witt, “Pretending Not to See or Hear, Refusing to Signify: The Farce and Tragedy of Geocentric Public Affairs Scholarship,” American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 921-39, at 935.
[431] Ibid., 932 (emphasis in original).
[432] Ibid., 932-34.