1974

I will construct a tower on these principles:

Make an empty square frame of glass, one inch deep and eight feet across, with the border being a foot broad. Take sheets of ten foot square thin glass. Stack the frames and sheets alternately on the ground up to a height of fifty feet, perhaps more – as high as the weight of glass will sustain without breaking under the strain.

Over this tower there will be a crane able to lift objects with hooks and a grab. We shall choose people to lift over this tower and to drop into its centre, through the thin sheets until the fall is broken by the density of the glass and they are embedded in its centre. The glass frames will afford a view of the interior of the tower, showing their eventual resting place and the contortions they adopt.

From a raised dais a short distance away we will smile inwardly and comment on them as they dropped - to hear their needless screams, and to observe their pointlessly circling limbs, to hear the descent of the shattering crash as they fall through the glasses and to watch those unlucky enough to survive attempt to climb out.

It is to watch the transition of a creature of reason to a thing of instinct; to observe the mindless motions of a being about to experience inflicted pain and injury. It is to observe the expression of a creature facing with knowledge its own imminent and inevitable extinction.