British artist Conrad Shawcross RA specialises in mechanical sculptures based on philosophical and scientific ideas. He is the youngest living member of the Royal Academy of Arts.

‘O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all!’ – Julian Jaynes

Shawcross says: “The name bicameral comes from ‘the origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind’, by Julian Jaynes; Jaynes’ book theorises that consciousness evolved out of the use of language, particularly metaphor. The sculpture is a progression of bifurcating and trifurcating elements that fan out from a stem loosely forming two hemispheres or sides. The work is in some ways an arcadian symbol for reason, humanity, rationalism, progress, whilst the abstract modular structure oscillates between recognizable natural systems such as neural pathways, a set of lungs, or even a schematized tree itself, but in the end it remains elusive to definition.”

The piece was created entirely without welding, using techniques drawn from Japanese wood joinery.

Donated by: Conrad Shawcross RA

https://conradshawcross.com  
@conradshawcross