A few days ago I started a discussion about everting objects on the Core77 Design Forum, which has since devolved into nonsense*. However, in writing about the question I was posing, I found that I answered it myself with a paradox:

You’re looking at two metal pots which have been turned inside out, one looks sort of crudely butchered and the other is shiny and new, could you tell which one had actually been everted?

The crude-looking butchered metal pot was made by taking it apart and putting it back together so it is actually an everted object, I think it would look strange but a viewer would agree that it has been turned inside out.

The smooth, shiny everted metal pot next to it was constructed specifically to appear everted (e.g. edges tape inward, handles on the inside). I think this object would seem surreal, illogical, and even funny, and I also think a viewer would agree that this is an inside out object. However, this created object hasn’t been flipped inside out, it was created in this state.

I don’t know if this clarifies what I’m trying to figure out, but it seems like eversion might be all in the head. There seems to be a conflict between the fact that turning something inside out is an act that must happen for it to be true and the idea that we make assumptions about the everted state of objects based on our memory of how they are supposed to look and function.

I’m going to do my best to actually turn a plastic water bottle inside out (a.k.a. cut it up and put it back together) and to construct an inside out water bottle from my imagination (a constructed illusion!). Both objects might pass for inside out, only one truly is, and both are in a sense, failures: the results of striving to create something that exists only in imagination and memory.

Turning the bottle inside out is easy enough: simply gut it. Or, in the same method that the three-dimensions of the earth are projected and distorted into two-dimensional maps, I’ll experiment with cutting the bottle neatly into butterflies or geodesic triangles.

To construct the illusory inversion is a little bit** more complex. I took a trip to the Compleat Sculptor this afternoon and picked up the AWESOMELY named “Dragon Skin 20,” a flexible liquid silicone for mold-making.

Kevin, one of our wonderful tough-love shop techs, helped me figure out the logistics of creating an inside out bottle. Here’s the plan:

  1. Drink 1.5 liter bottle of water (felt like I had to do this really fast since Kevin was waiting, it kind of hurt, then I had to pee a lot)
  2. Using a blade, butterfly the bottle open into two pieces so that you can get inside to brush on silicone. This means cutting along the seam almost all the way to the bottom. (I did not realize that bottles have seams!)
  3. Mix the silicone and brush it onto the inside of the bottle for twenty-five minutes, twice. Note that two rounds of twenty-five minutes feels like an ETERNITY when you’re trying to brush hazardous, gloopy silicone evenly around a curved surface. For some reason, between appying the first and second coat, they thought it would be a good idea to show me a picture of somebody who developed intolerance to silicone through prolonged exposure. Uncured silicone will burn you if it touches your skin, possibly poison you and/or give you a rash that will never go away. This is as far as we got today, the rest is theoretical so wish me luck.
  4. Let this cure for 24 hours so that it is no longer demonically poisonous.
  5. Pop the cured silicone mold from the inside of the bottle and flip it inside out, it’s flexible! The inside texture and surface of the bottle is now on the outside.
  6. Fill the hollow silicone mold with something stiff, like clay.
  7. Create a three-part plaster mold of the everted silicone mold.
  8. Thoroughly coat the plaster mold with a release agent and then pour more plaster into it. Open this up once the plaster has cured. You should now have a solid plaster bottle that looks like an everted plastic bottle. (But you’re not done yet!)
  9. Cut two blocks of wood that are as tall as the height of the plaster bottle and half the width of it. Drill these full of holes so that air can pass through them.
  10. Heat up the oven because you’re going to be melting some plastic! Lay the plaster bottle on a vacuum-forming table, with the two blocks of swiss-cheesed wood on each side.
  11. Once the plastic sheets are pliable, drop them on top of your setup and flip the air switch. Turn the bottle 180 degrees and vacuum-form one more sheet. Cut away the excess on both these sheets and you should be left with two plastic halves of the bottle.
  12. Seam these with glue.

Don’t even ask how I’m going to deal with threading the inside of the bottle and everting the cap (especially impossible because the everted cap needs to be just small enough to screw into the mouth of the yet-to-be-threaded bottle without falling through). The finishing touch of the eversion illusion is probably going to be putting the empty bottle upside down into a cylindrical vase that is slightly-larger in diameter than the bottle, filling the vase with 1.5 liters of water, freezing the water around the exterior of the bottle, popping the whole thing, and setting it right-side up next to its butchered counterpart. Again, it’s all theoretical so wish me luck.

* And by nonsense I mean somebody embedded the Age of Aquarius music video by the band Fifth Dimension after something about the fourth dimension was brought up.

** a lot