“The world is too dangerous to live in—not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who sit and let it happen.” Albert Einstein

 

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 History (Left)—A group of people caged by glass and wire. Wire people sit submissively in a circle bounded by their hands keeping one another from standing up. These people represent the unthinking, obedient population of bystanders who were too afraid to stand up for what is morally right. The glass bubble is an unthinking person’s thought filter allowing them to be controlled, obedient, compliant, and trapped by authority—the wire. A society of people who do not think, who are obedient and compliant without questioning led to the Holocaust.

 

Hope? (Right)—A similar situation with a group of people sitting allowing themselves to be caged by glass and wire. Except, one person is standing up with a hand breaking the glass—breaking free of thought. Will the Holocaust happen again, or will we break free of groupthink and think for ourselves?

 

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The Design Process:

             Creating the pieces proved harder than I originally thought. Timing heats correctly was difficult and figuring out how to get the wire to attach to the glass took a few tries. For the piece Hope?, creating the cracks was easy, but keeping the cracks in the piece was hard. The cracks kept resealing and during this process, I was worried that the whole piece might explode.