Dial, 2024 – 25
PLA, 3 x clock mechanism, 3 x mini speakers, 3 x MP3 players, 3 x sound files, cement mix, PVA, water, masking tape, dust, spit, sweat
14 x 500 x 400 cm
Produced over the course of ten months, Dial is a sculptural installation made up of several 3D printed pipe-like structures. The work explores ideas related to video game worlds, memory, decay and time. The works form, a gridded structure made from a thin layer of a concrete, was inspired by a map from the 2004 video game Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. It’s a game Bicknell-Knight played as a child, with the map being from a level that was incredibly tough to complete at the time. In the level, which is based within a complex series of underwater sewer tunnels, the player is tasked with collecting 99 sewer crystals. Collecting the crystals is not necessary to finish the game, more of an optional side quest.
This idea of collecting, both physically and digitally in this case, is an ongoing interest of Bicknell-Knight’s, tied to ideas around consumerism and how video games have changed since he was a child, moving from small-scale projects to an increasingly large industry focused solely on making money through inserting gambling mechanics, commonly found in casinos, into video games.
Several 3D printed structures are displayed on top of this map. These structures resemble pipes, or perhaps small, building like bunkers, with moving dials attached. These function as clock hands or could be perceived as looking like the latch of a tray table on an airplane.
These subtle movements are accompanied by a repetitively melodic soundscape emanating from tiny speakers hidden within the pipes of the sculpture. Recorded in an Estonian oil shale mine, the sound evokes elements of industry and the ongoing death and rebirth of the natural environment. Covered with multiple layers of concrete, the work appears to be a relic, or maybe some form of archaeological dig. The same mix is used to outline the areas of the map. Using concrete conceals the 3D printing production process, lightly obscuring how the work was produced, alongside making reference to the climate crisis through the use of a material which we are collectively running out of due to overconsumption.
Through using these different forms of technology Bicknell-Knight is both critiquing and engaging with how, without them, we would not be where we are today.
The following was written about Dial by Theresa Roth for the exhibition Hidden Rivers, which Dial was originally produced for:
99 gems. This is the site where they could be found. Sewer crystals, the only reason why you’d be here. They were necessary to leave the level and move on with the actual story. The entrance to this pipe labyrinth is still intact – there was never an exit. Most of the pipes have disappeared; only a few segments remain. Forgotten zones, collapsed into dust. Forgotten because they were too unimportant to remember in detail. Why would you? Everything looked the same: identical turns, generic tunnels.
Behind the few remaining bends, no sewer monsters are waiting anymore. They, too, have vanished – defeated or erased. Quit game without save? Reload level. Crash! Time has shifted.
The Artist returns, no longer a player, now an observer. He reconstructs a level from Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal – not from code, but from memory. He has grown older, larger. He does not move from within the level; the map is seen from above. From here, some kind of order becomes visible. The map makes sense only as a whole.
What he builds is a miniature. A kind of ruin-city. Suddenly, it’s not the inside that matters, but the outside. The form. The level was once buried deep within the game, its pipes impossible to breach. In his work, the barrier dissolves. The predetermined path no longer holds; he lets us move through the map, finding gaps just big enough for our feet.
Clocks are installed and counting, which time is unclear.
Fragments of the map have been 3D printed and coated in concrete. The missing areas are drawn with concrete dust on the floor. The layout is broken, partial, unstable. Now, no wind must come, or it’s erased.
What is preserved? What is lost? Which new form will manifest itself?
It’s an excavation in process. Permadeath mode.
Bicknell-Knight’s work resembles an archaeology of the digital. What remains is a monument to forgetting: a mapped empty space, an abandoned memory.
Dial has been included in the following exhibitions:
– Invisible Stones, curated by Lilian Hiob-Küttis, Kirke Kangro and Ruth Melioranski. At Telliskivi Green Hall, Tallinn, EE, 11th November – 7th December 2025.
– Hidden Rivers, curated by Theresa Roth. At EKA Gallery, Tallinn, EE, 1st – 24th August 2025.
BOB BICKNELL-KNIGHT 