SEISMIC: Art Meets Science

SEISMIC ART MEETS SCIENCE

ULI AP EDWARD BURTYNSKY 0RPHAN DRIFT PETER MATTHEWS CLAIRE MORGAN ELPIDA HADZI-VASILEVA LISA PETTIBONE SHUSTER + MOSELEY DAVID RICKARD TROIKA 1

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GIANT presents SEISMIC: ART MEETS SCIENCE, a group exhibition which draws on a broad scope of scientific themes to explore the numerous links between science and the arts, mounted in collaboration with SEISMA Magazine.

Curated by Paul Carey-Kent, the exhibition runs from 28 October 2023 to 20 January 2024 at GIANT Gallery, Bournemouth.

In SEISMIC: ART MEETS SCIENCE, ten artists present works inspired by or connected to specific scientific ideas, in an intriguing and dynamic exhibition that comprises painting, photography, film, sculpture, and installation. The exhibition presents a diverse colleciton of mediums, styles, and aesthetics – bringing to light fresh angles from which to approach the work, and raising surprising, often fascinating questions.

The works themselves do not set out to explain the science, but instead take off from scientific concerns to arrive at art that engages with scientific issues. Bringing original perspectives to sit alongside art historial undestandings, the exhibition is unique in its inclusion of not one form of commentary, but two. In relation to each work, CareyKent’s art world viewpoint can be read alongside an informative text by a relevant scientific expert. The scientists set out the nature of the science in a manner which is not simply explanatory and interesting, but also engaging and accessible for viewers of all backgrounds.

All images shown courtesy of the artists and GIANT Gallery © 2023 Photography by Ed Hill © 2023 Ed Hill. All rights reserved.

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ULI AP

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The Yellow One, 2023

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The Yellow One, 2023

ULI AP

Mixed media installation and related drawings (plus opening performance Alien AI at Giant and interactive social media performances throughout the run)

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Uli Ap blurs the digital with the biological, fluidifying identities by disrupting their social and technological constructs through a combination of real situations and virtual constructs. Most recently, Ap has pursued this by taking on the persona of the strikingly yellow Alien AI: neither alien nor artificial intelligence nor creature, but all of them and none of them at the same time. For SEISMIC: ART MEETS SCIENCE, visitors are invited to don yellow suits to enter a super-yellow zone, and to upload photographs of their body parts from their phones to assist the Alien AI in their virtual shape-shifting. This relates to the ‘post-human self’, which Ap explains as ‘a state of technological emergency when you are neither human nor machine. We are equipped with so much technology that we are now dealing with issues of transhumanism. People may have hightech implants where body parts are displaced or changed with help from artificial intelligence … I do not think we can imagine ourselves without machines. Without our phones, for example, we feel lost and disconnected from the whole of society.’ So, the Alien AI engages with people through the machines which act as the key source of the posthuman self. There has been much discussion of whether AI might take on human characteristics. The Yellow One raises the question of whether humans might take on AI characteristics …

Paul Carey-Kent – curator

Yellow as a Symbol of Caution – Beware of the AI-centered Human in You The intense and accelerating development of AI technologies in the last decade provoked numerous discussions about the impact of AI on our everyday lives and society. As AI technologies are usually very complex, those who are outside of the specific research field of AI, often rely on the various media portrayals of AI to develop a basic understanding of these technologies. However, one can notice a striking uniformity in pictorial metaphors that are commonly used to illustrate AI technologies in media articles. From the well-known wired brains to the various anthropomorphic illustrations of human-like robotic entities, one common feature of these depictions is that they are usually represented with cool colours – green, purple and, most commonly, blue.

In this context, the remarkably dominant characteristic of Uli Ap’s work – the ‘all-encompassing yellowness’ – emerges as a unique metaphorical portrayal of the personified Alien AI. The symbolic and emotional connotations of yellow are usually associated with cheerfulness and warmth. As we have become accustomed to the coldness and distance that prevail the usual bluish assemblage of AI depictions, Uli Ap’s work brings about a feeling of strangeness and creates a potential for bewilderment. As the focal point of their work is precisely to question our entanglement with AI, its yellowness symbolizes the ongoing transition of perceiving AI as something mechanical and distant, to perceiving it as something more human-like, close, intimate and deeply integrated with our everyday lives.

But yellow is not only a colour of warmth. It is also the colour of warning and caution. What exactly should we be cautious about?

Job displacement, privacy concerns, bias and discrimination, lack of transparency and accountability? All of these are real concerns that deserve our attention, but Uli Ap’s work focuses on something that is nowadays becoming increasingly relevant – our personal dependence on AI. In recent years, the AI research community has been emphasizing the need to develop more ‘human-centered AI’ technologies. The notion of human-centricity became a trending term in AI research. One aspect that is often highlighted as a specific feature of human-centered AI is that AI technologies should ‘amplify and augment rather than displace human abilities’. But in our everyday lives, how do we exactly determine if our abilities are being enhanced or replaced by contemporary AI technologies?

The main purpose of any machine, including AI-based machines, was to enable humans to perform some usually repetitive and predictable tasks faster and more efficiently. However, in the last two years we have witnessed a remarkable progress in generative AI technologies which disrupted this long prevailing perception of technology by confronting us with highly meaningful, unique, and imaginative synthetically generated content. For example, recently it became possible to create convincing and original digital images of our written ideas and thoughts in just a few seconds, using AI-based text-to-image generators such as DALL·E or Stable Diffusion. Almost everyone is by now familiar with the famous language model ChatGPT that can be used to answer questions, provide recommendations, and generate a variety of different textual outputs on a wide range of topics. Thousands of people are now using these technologies in their everyday lives. At this point it might seem that these technologies are augmenting our capabilities, but we are uncertain about the long-term impact of these technologies on our capacity to imagine and create – something we have for long considered an exclusively human characteristic, the one that specifically differentiates us from machines.

With contemporary AI technologies, it has become increasingly clear that technology’s purpose now extends beyond overcoming the limitations imposed by our physical bodies and is becoming primarily aimed at transcending the limitations of our mind. Using AI to surpass our creative and cognitive abilities perhaps represents the tipping point of the posthuman identity crisis. By envisioning the growing entanglement between humans and AI technologies in the form of the amorphous yellow Alien AI, Uli Ap’s work prompts us to reflect on how to harmonize our current fascination and growing dependency on AI with our need for setting boundaries in order to preserve our human identity. The yellowness and embodied fluidity represent a warning sign and a symbol of the ongoing process of transitioning from ‘human-centered AI’ towards ‘AI-centered humans’.

Dr Eva Cetinić – DVS Imagegraph Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Zurich

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EDWARD BURTYNSKY

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Rock of Ages # 8, Abandoned Section, Wells-Lamson Quarry, Barre, Vermont, 1991

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EDWARD BURTYNSKY 10

Railcuts # 8, C.N. Track, Thompson River, British Columbia, 1985, 46cm x 56 cm; Rock of Ages # 8, Abandoned Section, Wells-Lamson Quarry, Barre, Vermont, 1991, 46cm x 56 cm; Alberta Oil Sands #2, Fort McMurray, Alberta, 2007, 99cm x 124 cm; Silver Lake Operations #5, Lake Lefroy, Australia, 2007, 122 x 152cm. All are chromogenic colour prints Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has long documented the effect of industry through large scale aerial photographs that capture the sublime and often surreal qualities of human-altered landscapes to arrive at an abstracted, almost painterly, language. Burtynsky and team scout Google Earth to find sites, then photograph those using hydraulic poles, planes, and more recently computer-controlled drones positioned by GPS technology. What we see may be visually seductive, but shows the sweeping effect of resource depletion and extinction, of obtaining the fundamental matter from which human civilisation has been wrought. For example, Alberta’s oil sands give Canada the third largest reserves in the world, but extracting the oil is energy-intensive and destructive to the landscape – according to the National Geographic, the toxic tailings waste ponds created so far would fill more than 500,000 Olympic swimming pools. In Burtynsky’s words ‘Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times’.

Paul Carey-Kent – curator

Reflections on the Anthropocene Born in 1955, Edward Burtynsky is a child of the Anthropocene Epoch, which geologists tell us began when the plutonium released by atom bomb tests reached sufficiently high levels to be used as the first truly global marker laid down by humans. Future generations of scientists will still be able to trace this ‘stratigraphic’ layer around the world many years from now. In ocean sediments to lake muds to cave speleothems and to the growth rings in fossil trees or corals, they will be able to trace, even after countless millennia, the isotopic remnants of the Great Industrial Acceleration that began in the 1950s.

The biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky already foresaw this revolution in the 1920s, calling it the onset of a new ‘sphere of reason’ or the ‘Noosphere’, which followed the abiotic ‘Geosphere’ and ‘Biosphere’ that together have lasted 4567 million years. The Great Acceleration of the 1950s witnessed the beginning of an exponential increase not only in the world’s population but also in the digging of mines, the production of energy, the manufacture of cement, fertilisers, fuel, steel, concrete, and plastics and the commercial excavation of every single element of the periodic table. The landscape marks of abandoned nickel mines, of deltas made barren by land use, of railway cuttings slicing through mountains, of lakes of shimmering tar, and of dormant granite quarries will be barely decipherable eons from now.

However, the legacy of our explosive success will live on as the geochemical fingerprints of industry, contamination, and pollution.

Vernadsky was right to predict the sphere of reason as an emergent property of our planetary evolution, but with society’s conscious endeavours to make from Earth’s natural resources, isotopes and materials that had never previously existed, came an environmental awakening. Not only will landscape marks and sedimentary pollution remain as distant geological memories of our existence, but our collective environmental conscience will be equally traceable many eons from now.

Dr Graham Shields – Professor of Geology, University College London

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0RPHAN DRIFT

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If AI were Cephalopod, 2019

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If AI were Cephalopod, 2019 Single Channel HD video, running time 09:00 What is it like to be an octopus? Would that be a better model for how

0RPHAN DRIFT

an AI might be regarded as ‘intelligent’ than assessing how its responses

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differ from the human? And what would that mean for the way people look at the world? Such questions are explored by the collaborative artist 0rphan Drift in an immersive video. Octopuses communicate through colour, see through their skin, and take in more oxygen than most marine animals. The oxygen feeds what has been described as their distributed brain: as 0rphan Drift’s Maggie Roberts explains ‘a lot of stuff goes on in the eight arms – like chemo-tactile checking things out and deciding what to move towards – through local processes, without needing to send the message back.’ That resonates with the increasingly distributed approach taken in AI, which aims to solve problems by allocating them to autonomous processing nodes, allowing bottom-up and top-down processes to occur simultaneously.

And, as 0rphan Drift remind us, octopuses are also rather beautiful counters to our default mode of anthropocentric thinking.

Paul Carey-Kent – curator

Cephalopod Intelligence In If AI were Cephalopod, 0rphan Drift discuss the dominative histories

will spark intelligence into being conscious, unified, or human-like, but if

and mechanics of AI algorithms and propose a different approach

we investigate its mathematic process and what that conceptualises, it

and understanding through the squishy, multiple unknown modes of

is heavily embedded within, and modelled on, the carceral ideologies

Cephalopod intelligence. This paradigm is necessarily placed between

of State Capitalism. RL’s processes see that agents learn through

the static structures of control that AI embodies – ones that value, break

reward and punishment. Based on discredited and outdated animal

down and lineate infinitely complex and changing worlds into reductive

learning theory by Edward Thorndike, agents must perform set roles and

ontologies – and those of Cephalopod intelligence that are distributed

behaviours to be valued, retained and learnt from.

throughout their changing and dynamic forms. Cephalopod intelligence is split over nine brains in a way that the brains themselves start to blend

This artwork makes us ask, how does RL frame and imagine intelligence,

with the body, and the body, due to their amazing transformative

and is it the only way? Why would we think that something so different

abilities, blurs into and is enmeshed with its surroundings.

would or should be the same as us? And why does it depend on a ‘liberation’ into intelligence? It asks what/how things (AI, Cephalopod,

As a technical work, this project aims to develop new understandings

human) think/relate/interrelate, and how can these different notions of

of what computational intelligence can be when not thought about

intelligence open us up to understanding what other models and modes

through the limiting imaginaries of human-like consciousness and

we are missing by being constrained by the dominating methods of

intelligence. Ai algorithms have been repeatedly criticised for what

contemporary AI.

they are trained on (data biases), but more recently, subtlety and complexly, on the ways in which they learn and what concepts and

To re-approach this, If AI were Cephalopod pulls from a morphing set

ideas these approaches are rooted in. By stretching these notions

of multiple perspectives, each pulling on sensory compositions of their

of computational intelligence to creatures whose intelligence is so

own, slowly moving across us and letting us feel how these intelligent

far from our own (but maybe not), the work asks us to rethink these

relations could be.

methods, concepts, and ideas outside the traditions of intelligence as domination, control, and determinism.

The focus is on Reinforcement Learning (RL) here and reflects on some of the research I have done in Software Studies and Science Technology Studies (STS) as well as the conversations we (0rphan Drift and I) have

George Simms – PhD candidate at I-DAT, University of Plymouth, researching Trans*feminist and Crip methods towards AI and automation, specifically around collaborative/collective knowledge base infrastructures.

had around this stem of work. RL is often imagined as the seed of AI that

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ELPIDA HADZI-VASILEVA

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Beauty Enveloped, 2016

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ELPIDA HADZI-VASILEVA 18

Case for Beauty, 2016 Cow stomach, turned wood, 25cm x 35cm x 30cm

Beauty Enveloped, 2016 Lamb intestine, wire, metal, 250cm x 750cm x 150cm Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva has a straightforward acceptance of the visceral realities of the body – more what one might expect of a surgeon than an artist. That lack of squeamishness has seen her work with all manner of internal organs, showing us the unexpected beauty in matter from which we might instinctively shy away. Materials such as sheep’s testicles, cow’s stomachs and pig’s hearts have brought her into continuing contact with an interesting mix of scientific disciplines: medical, biological, zoological and anatomical. Here she invites us to look at the digestive system with a new approach, to pass beyond the social constructs and be amazed by the delicacy of our guts. That aestheticising gaze is not just a fascinating switch of mode, but potentially subversive: exposing those functions we would usually hide might connect to a plea for transparency and openness, both now and in how we present the past. And the unexpected delicacy and fragility of life’s internal architecture underlines both the transience of life and the role of medical science in maintaining it, as we read ourselves into Hadzi-Vasileva’s animal structures.

Paul Carey-Kent – curator

Gastric Beauty The gastro-intestinal tract, or ‘GIT’ is a very cleverly engineered tube that

Rather than permitting the expansion of the organ, it increases its surface

starts with the mouth and ends with the anus. We prefer to forget about

area to maximise the absorption of nutrients by the blood. If we were

it, and some people find the thought of it disgusting or even shameful.

to use a microscope, we could observe that those folds are repeated

However, its function is essential for us to live, without it, we cannot extract

further down at the tissue and cellular level with villi and microvilli which

any energy from the food we ingest.

are little brush-like extensions. Although long speculated, the area of the small intestine, if completely unfolded, has been calculated to be

Scientists are curious about the physiological adaptations and the

as large as half the size of a badminton court. Beauty Enveloped is an

cellular and molecular processes that take place along the gastro-

obvious nod to the inherent nature of the intestine, it is long and tortuous.

intestinal tract, so they can better understand why and how diseases

As we walk pass it, like the food that flows into it, we are absorbed and

may occur and find cures. Like a true scientist, Elpida is curious. She sees

invited to come close to its delicate surface to try identifying those

beauty in organic and natural processes when most people see rotten or

microscopic folds.

decayed matter. She instinctively understood that those curves and folds seen in the organs of the gastro-intestinal tract are functionally important

Once the nutrients have been extracted by the small intestine, it is the

and even found beauty in them. With her art, she exposes those hidden

turn of water to be reabsorbed at the level of the large intestine and

features and invites us to intimately gaze at the digestive system.

useless undigestible remaining matter is stored in the rectum and finally excreted by the anus. This long tube is open-ended on both sides and

After being crushed in the mouth, food reaches the stomach, which is

therefore, whatever is contained in it, is never strictly part of our bodies.

an empty pouch with lots of inside folds (gastric rugae) that allows its expansion, depending on the size of the bolus. There, it is further broken

The clever adaptations of digestive system, exposed by Elpida in Case

down by muscular movements and the secretion of acids. With her piece

for Beauty and Beauty Enveloped, are vital and the result of thousand

Case for Beauty, Elpida exposes those folds and the various areas of

years of evolution, another marvel and mystery of nature. By sharing her

the stomach that play different functions depending on the density of

view on the body, she invites us to look at the digestive system with a new

the rugae. She turned the stomach inside out to reveal those delicate

approach, she wants us to pass beyond the social constructs and be

structures and invite us to look closely at these normally hidden structures.

amazed by the beauty of our guts.

The food bolus then continues its way to the small intestine, where most of the nutrients will be absorbed. Although called small, it is the longest part

Dr Caroline Pellet-Many – Lecturer in Biomedical Sciences, Royal

of the gastro-intestinal tract, averaging three-and-a-half times the length

Veterinary College

of our body. Like the stomach, it is covered by folds on its inner surface.

However, those folds, called plicae, have a different role.

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PETER MATTHEWS

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Condor, 2022

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Condor,144 x 165 cm, Rodeo, 162cm x 161cm, Husávik, 149cm x 131cm, and Yee–Ha (in ground floor window), 126cm x 149cm. All 2022. Fog, 2023, 60 x 73 cm.

Oil, oil stick, earth matter and rain and found objects on canvases from the Atlantic coasts of Iceland and Cornwall in artist’s frame Peter Matthews isn’t one for the studio. Rather, he makes paintings on remote coasts when, in his words ‘the materials will double up as a shelter of some kind, from the weather like a sun screen; from the rain such as a roof; or a resting platform, like a hammock – so I have got used to working on large spreads of unprimed canvas that allow me to be flexible and responsive to the environment.’ Sometimes he’ll dive to the bottom of the ocean with a canvas, barely able to see what he’s doing. And his drawings can also be made underwater so that, as he puts it, ‘the sea is depicting the sea itself’. Shells, sand, and litter may find their way onto his paintings as he records what he experiences in a stream-of-consciousness manner – and often films the process from a drone, seeing the footage as adding to the painting. Often, as in Condor – made either side of the Atlantic in Cornwall and Iceland – he combines two canvases made on two coasts to suggest the journey and distance between them. That adds to the seductiveness of the two-part paintings, and transmits the sense that all the world’s connected through its oceans.

Paul Carey-Kent – curator

The Artist as Cartographer Peter is a mapmaker of a curious sort. Maps – at least that is what

Any mapmaker inherently has an agenda and the maps they create

we called them after he returned to our laboratory from his forays

have a hidden motive. A map converts the cartographer’s perceptions

along the coast. He would be laden with jetsam and treasures from

of some worldly reality and imbeds this information in a manner that

the seashore, and full of tales from his often-nocturnal drifts and wet

helps us make sense of its complexity. However, what isn’t shown is just

sketching in the bioluminescent tides. His intermingling of media and

as important – the white spaces, the hic sunt dracones – these are gaps

found objects was reminiscent to me of the stick and shell charts of the

in knowledge, and more important still are the conscious omissions a

ancient Polynesian navigators whose seafaring voyages spanned the

mapmaker chooses while selecting just those fragments of the world

Pacific and were guided by their intimate knowledge of the patterns

they wish to focus our attention. Because of this, each map that we see

of ocean swell encoded in the ribs, threads, and lashings within their

is not a complete representation or transparent description of reality,

sculptural framework. This was a way to visualize the unseen – a means

but a mixture of the prejudices of the mapper with a sliver of the world.

to capture the subtle motions of waves on the hull of a canoe far out at sea and with a scope far beyond what they could see with

In Condor, what is it that our mapmaker is trying to convey about a

landlocked senses. Modern oceanographers have relied on maps

connection by the sea between faraway places? I see Peter as a

extensively to help us understand the invisible. The ocean is mostly

cartographer not of physical landscapes of sight and touch, but of

opaque to human eyes and is of a spatial scale encompassing most

more the metaphysical, akin to our ancient navigators guided by

of our blue planet, so we must rely on the distillation and compression

the stars and by the feelings within a gently rocking boat on a swell

inherent in a map for comprehension. Hence, we have relied on them

generated half an ocean away and bent by the shadows of islands.

to understand the swirling currents, hidden mountain ranges, deep

These are dream maps wherein our mapmaker can show us the unseen

trenches marking the boundaries of continents, ephemeral gusting

and can hopefully point us towards a world which is just out of reach.

winds, and the ebb and flow of heat and stratified density that drives the engine of the entire world ocean.

Dr Dale Stokes – Scripps Institution of Oceanography

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CLAIRE MORGAN

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Heart of Darkness, 2012

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Heart of Darkness, 2012 Bluebottles, nylon, lead, acrylic, 250cm x 75cm x 75 cm As we approach Heart of Darkness, the beauty of modulated regularity from a distance is revealed to be constituted by something that most people find repulsive: bluebottle flies, arranged with geometric

CLAIRE MORGAN

precision to set up a contrast between the ordered and the wild.

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Thousands of exactingly-threaded flies form a cube made up of smaller, intersecting, cubes. The internal cubes are made up of differing densities of flies, so creating an illusory form with a dense, dark core, with spaces between individual flies becoming tighter and tighter towards the core. Morgan explains: ‘I discovered that I could use incredibly fragile materials to create the illusion of precise geometric structures. Any event might destroy these structures. As the potential for destruction seems closer, the senses of frailty and futility become more powerful, and there is a particular beauty in that moment’. Extreme control is imposed on apparent chaos in a way which, paradoxically, emphasises both the insignificance of an individual within a large body and also the critical importance of individuals to the overall effect – if one slips out of position, you notice.

Paul Carey-Kent – curator

The Remarkable Blowfly From afar, the small objects that make up this suspended cube cannot

What is the point of metamorphosis though? Crucially, it is two animals

be defined. Move closer though and you see them for what they are –

for the price of one. It is a division of labour in the life of an animal. The

a multitude of blowflies arranged with mathematical precision to form

larva does most of the feeding, sometimes all of the feeding, while the

the pleasing geometric shape we see from a distance.

adult is concerned solely with mating and dispersal.

To many observers, curiosity may be replaced by revulsion as they draw

Moving on from the blowflies that make up the piece I look to how

closer to the work, the true identity of the dark specks revealed. As an

they are arranged and the geometric shape they form. There is a nice

entomologist, this work talks to me on different levels. On one level we

contrast here between the flies arranged in a two-dimensional pattern

have the use of blowflies, typically reviled, but woefully misunderstood.

on the ground and the flies suspended in the air to form the three

To many they are animals of filth, of death and of decay. However, in

dimensional shape. Our understanding of the natural world is extremely

an ecological sense they are absolutely crucial to life on land, efficiently

superficial, rather like the way in which we perceive the flies arranged

and quietly recycling dead animals back into the web of life. In ideal

at the foot of the work, when the reality of nature is vastly more

conditions, they turn dead animals into more blowflies in a matter of

complex. Consider for a moment that to date we have described just

days, nourishing the soil and a huge variety of other species in the

over 1.5 million animal species, just over a million of which are insects.

process. Without these animals, the cycling of materials and energy

Think about all the interactions between individuals and between

through terrestrial ecosystems cannot happen.

species – the predation, the parasitism, the symbioses, the territorial disputes, the courtship, the reproduction, happening all of the time,

The immature stages, I prefer to call them larvae rather than maggots

everywhere. For me, thinking about this is akin to contemplating infinity.

because of the negative connotations of the latter, are works of art

There are still millions of animal species out there to describe too, to say

in their own right. Beautifully adapted feeding machines that have

nothing of trying to work how these species live and interact. Answering

dispensed with extraneous features to complete one task and one

these questions would take an army of biologists thousands of years.

alone – to feed and grow as quickly as possible. They have no eyes, no limbs, just the instinct to feed quickly so they can grow and transform

The complexity of the natural world, how we try and make sense of it

into an adult fly. And what a transformation this is. Metamorphosis

via the unit of the species and the neat geometry of the piece brings

to represent change is a very widely used trope, but for me this

me to one final thought. What is a species? The concept of a species is

phenomenon, especially insect metamorphosis, is one of the most

a useful tool, but one that we invented. There are currently 32 different

remarkable aspects of organismal biology. Really think about it for a

species definitions and there isn’t one that applies to all life. Our minds

few moments. A blowfly larva and the adult fly it will become are the

thrive on order – neatly arranged compartments – and we seek this

same individual, yet the morphology of each stage is staggeringly

when making sense of the natural world, but nature is dynamic and

different. All of the instructions to build these two wildly different bodies

fuzzy with poorly defined boundaries. Regardless of the organisms in

are contained within the ancient code of the fly’s DNA. A cascade of

question, lineages are continually splitting and rejoining over time –

events turns genes off or on, transforming a writhing animal of rotting

rather like the braided flow of a river in a delta – and this is the only

bodies into an animal of the air. Words can never do this process justice.

commonality we can find.

It is beautiful and endlessly fascinating.

Dr Ross Piper – entomologist and broadcaster

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SHUSTER & MOSELEY

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Jewel of Space, 2023

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Jewel of Space, 2023 Installation, variable dimensions Claudia Moseley and Edward Shuster, who have collaborated since 2007, come from contrasting backgrounds in fine art and philosophy – but share a particular interest in how our experiences of reality are framed. Their joint practice creates light-mobiles, sculptural installations and immersive, meditative environments reflecting on the nature of consciousness and technology. Typically those works arise from thinking about both cosmological ideas – how our world comes into being – and also asking how we develop our knowledge of the world.

Jewel of Space traces an inner landscape of channels, pathways and luminous sites as the glass elements interact with projected light to evoke what Shuster & Moseley see as ‘a language of spectral illumination – a cosmological map and a geography of a secret body, manifesting in space’. Moving through this field gives a sense of the interconnectedness of both inter- and extra-galactic space.

Paul Carey-Kent – curator

Paths of Light There is a great hierarchy of scales in space. From asteroids, comets,

This landscape of gravitational potholes and wells diverts the path of

planets and stars, to galaxy disks and their trailing arms, clusters of

everything that passes close by, including light. Gravity bends the paths

galaxies, and the monstrous black holes residing at their centres.

of the light and causes lensing patterns in the sky. When we observe

This diversity is depicted by the shapes of the blown-glass, seemingly

a far-away galaxy with our telescopes, we often see rings of light or

suspended in mid-air. Moving through this field gives a sense of the

even multiple mirror images instead of the galaxy itself. This is because

interconnectedness of both inter- and extra-galactic space. The

the light that was travelling towards us from the background has been

hierarchy of structure formation is depicted by the dispersion of rough

warped on its journey. In this piece we can see diffraction patterns,

fragments, evoking gas and dust, that are guided into well-ordered

intricate threads of light and shadow, and beams of light swept out and

geometrical shapes. Raw chunks of glass nestle amongst pristine prisms

away from their hosts.

and disks in a conglomeration of angles, all united by paths of light.

The interplay between the glass and the light are reminiscent of the Whilst these objects appear to hang in the sky, they are in fact all

lensing effects that are caused by nothing but gravity. It reminds us of

embedded in the fabric of space-time, creating dimples that are

the intrinsically curved space-time that we live in, to which nothing, not

proportional in depth to their mass. The larger the object, the larger the

even light, is immune.

well it creates, and the stronger gravitational pull it can exert. This is why, for example, the Earth orbits the Sun rather than the other way around – the Sun’s gravitational pull trumps our own because of its deeper gravitational potential well.

Dr Pippa Cole – Postdoctoral Researcher in Cosmology, University of Milan-Bicocca

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LISA PETTIBONE

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Truth in Illusion, 2019-23

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Truth in Illusion, 2019-23 Light projection installation What may look like a digital screen proves, once the viewer is tempted round the back, to be a live light projection. Lisa Pettibone originally made Truth in Illusion while artist in residence during 2018-19 at Mullard Space Science Laboratory (UCL) following the progress of the Euclid Mission, a European Space Agency initiative to explore the dark universe. She was inspired by how, when unexpected arcs of light were first detected by astrophysicists in deep space they appeared illusory – until it was understood that they were in fact distorted light from galaxies bent by the gravitational pull of dark matter. Then scientists began to calculate the shape of this mysterious, invisible stuff: a shift in paradigm led them to look at matters differently. In Pettibone’s words: ‘Once we understand a concept, it is impossible to see the original perception in the same way’. Her set-up operates analogously – both in the visuals of mysterious light, and in the perceptual shift which occurs when we see how the variance of light and shadow create a narrative about twisted, clear glass.

Paul Carey-Kent – curator

The Intangible Nature of Light To a cosmologist, working on the mystery of Dark Matter (a transparent substance that fills the Universe, whose nature is currently unknown) Truth in Illusion seems to represent a microcosm of the macro scale.

There are echos of the computer simulations we generate to attempt to mimic the cosmological observations. As the light and shadows and light-shadows interleave they are reminiscent of arcs of light caused by gravitational lensing in clusters of galaxies. We have a fixed view of the Universe from Earth, but this allows one to imagine how the view might change if we could fly through intergalactic space and change our perspective. The effervescence reminds one of the intangible nature of light itself, and the untouchable yet pervasive dark matter.

It’s leads one to question whether ‘dark matter’ is even the best name for the phenomenon we observe, that dark matter is in fact maybe light matter, transparent matter, an unknown material, or a materia incognita. We have learnt deep Truths about the cosmological home we call the Universe, but our language and mathematics causes us to frame things in certain ways, and perhaps fool ourselves, into thinking we know more that we actually do. Perhaps the only real truth is the hubristic and perhaps reductionist illusion that we really actually know anything significant about the cosmos at all?

Dr Tom Kitching – Professor of Astrophysics, University College London

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DAVID RICKARD

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Cosmic Field (3.7mHz), 2023

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Cosmic Field (3.7mHz), 2023

DAVID RICKARD

Hi-hat cymbals, cosmic ray detectors and electronics

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David Rickard has a considerable track record of integrating science into his art. He has looked, for example, at the weight of air; the threshold of optical vision; and the differential speed of the earth’s rotation, depending on distance from the poles. Cosmic Field is a new commission made especially for Seisma which reveals the presence – unsuspected by many – of cosmic rays on Earth. Each of the twelve cymbals contains a Geiger counter that detects the rays as they pass through the room in a ghostly fashion, causing them to play – the invisible is made tangible. The installation also cycles between the background noise of the space and background noise of the cosmic rays, by turning the Geiger counters on and off at intervals of 4’33”. That references John Cage’s famous 1952 composition, which consists of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is ‘performed’ on unplayed instruments. The title picks up both aspects, for 3.7 MHz is not only a cycle mid-range in the sun’s primary oscillations, it also converts to a cycle of 273 seconds – or 4’33”.

Paul Carey-Kent – curator

The Sound of Cosmic Rays I’m an astronomer, with a long-standing interest in the possibilities that

produces all manner of eruptions and particulate emissions, including its

can arise when artists and scientists come together to collaborate. It

own cosmic rays. The conversion of solar cosmic rays into sound is apt,

can trigger new ways of thinking, both for the artist and the scientist. I’m

for Stars, including the Sun, resonate like musical instruments because

particularly fascinated by the processes that shape how interdisciplinary

they have sound trapped in their interiors. These sound waves are able

collaborations are initiated and fostered, and what is needed to ensure

to make the stars resonate at their natural frequencies, like waves inside

they develop and prosper. Art-science collaboration opens the possibility

a wind instrument. The compression of the trapped sound makes the

to engage audiences to think about and be aware of science through

stars oscillate in a rhythmic, periodic fashion, and we are able to detect

the medium of art. Cosmic Field is an excellent example of how this

this gentle breathing by observing small, periodic changes in brightness

can work, since a natural question for the audience is ‘what is making

as stars get slightly hotter and brighter as they are compressed, and

the cymbals resonate?’ The artwork respects and integrates scientific

then cooler and darker as they relax.

practice, with each cymbal containing a Geiger counter that detects cosmic rays as they pass though the room in a ghostly fashion – the

Art-science collaboration can change views, perceptions, and

apparently invisible is made tangible.

attitudes on how art and science interact, for both audiences and practitioners: the scientist can influence the practice of the artist, and

In this way, Cosmic Field uses sound to bring elusive, ethereal cosmic

potentially also vice versa; and those influences can be demonstrated

rays to life – high-energy particles travelling at nearly the speed of light.

to, and shape the views of, the audience. I believe Cosmic Field

They originate from beyond our solar system, as well as being produced

demonstrates this interplay beautifully. If audiences tune in to the

by the Sun. After passing through the vast reaches of space they enter

work’s strong scientific grounding, they will find an intriguing path into

the Earth’s atmosphere, colliding with atoms and breaking down into

the wonders of cosmic rays.

a number of different sub-atomic particles, which pass through our environment and us at an astounding speed and frequency. The Sun

Dr Bill Chaplin – Professor and Head of the School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Birmingham

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TROIKA

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Irma Watched Over by Machines, 2021

TROIKA

Terminal Beach, 2020 Computer animation, custom motion capture, 4:00 min. Sound in collaboration with Dr Nigel Meredith, British Antarctic Survey

Irma Watched Over by Machines, 2021 Heavy body acrylic, 162 x 133 cm The various projects of the London-based Franco-German trio Troika – formed in 2003 by Eva Rucki, Conny Freyer and Sebastien Noel – often focus on how the ‘real’ is giving way to the ‘digital’, and the consequences. Both their film and painting relate to how the 250m computerised cameras operating 24 hours per day now do much of the world’s seeing. ‘Considering the disastrous path humanity has chosen to follow over the last hundreds of years’, they explain of Terminal Beach, ‘we could well imagine that the birth of a fully conscious AI being will be marked by images of vast destruction, hurricanes, floods, and other environmental catastrophes’. Irma Watched Over by Machines returns similar content to the analogue realm of painting: computers use 256 shades each of red, green and blue, too many for the human eye to distinguish, but even Troika’s downsizing that to 16 reds, 16 greens and 16 blues requires a lengthy repetitive-come-meditative process carried out by all three members, applied with syringes using their ‘recipes and numbers and a microscale to measure the pigments’.

Paul Carey-Kent – curator

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Satellite Constellations The work of the British Antarctic Survey combines both remote instruments and periods of time being in remote locations to study the Antarctic and surrounding Southern Ocean.

Remote sensing is the method of monitoring the environment from a distance. We use cameras mounted on satellites and aircraft to collect images. Financially and logistically it is almost impossible to consistently measure the planet – especially the vast and hostile Antarctic – without using remote sensing to provide access to real information, collected by hundreds of cameras orbiting high above the Earth without disturbing it. These satellite constellations are a constituent part of the growing surveillance machine referenced in Irma Watched Over by Machines, regularly recording the Earth’s surface in many colours per pixel. Most of these images will never be seen directly: the volume of data is too large, and so we are reliant on computers to extract and visualise useful information. But it allows us to zoom in on fine details in extremely remote places, such as icebergs calving from the front of glaciers, small patches of vegetation thriving when the snow retreats, or how our ship is navigating through sea ice. Despite the sinister notion of a conscious super vision, this technology does provide us with important evidence of how our environment is changing and understanding of the role the Antarctic plays in the Earth system.

Dr Andrew Fleming – Head of Mapping & Geographic Information Centre at the British Antarctic Survey

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GIANT (Gallery of Innovation and Anti Normal Thinking) is a 15000 sq ft artist-run space in Bournemouth. Founded by British artist Stuart Semple, GIANT occupies the entire second floor of a former Debenhams building in the town centre and is dedicated to presenting challenging works by some of the world’s most respected contemporary artists, bringing many to Bournemouth for the first time.

Exhibited artists to date include: Louise Bourgeois, The Chapman Brothers; Judy Chicago; Jeremy Deller; Jim Lambie; Ad Minoliti; Senga Nengudi; Martin Parr; Tai Shani; Michael Simpson; Mark Tichner; Gavin Turk; and Kacey Wong.

Launched in Summer 2021, GIANT has already gained critical and public acclaim, being covered in major publications including the Times, where it was branded ‘Saatchi-on-Sea,’ as well as the Observer, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

As the largest arts centre of its kind on the South Coast, since its launch GIANT has engaged audiences with contemporary visual art, through a program of major exhibitions, projects and events, including several major international-level shows. With visitor figures that rival some of London’s most loved institutions GIANT has lead a cultural sea change and has proved itself a key part in Bournemouth’s resurgence as a major coastal creative centre. www.giant.space | @giantartgallery

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Paul Carey-Kent is a freelance art writer and curator, and a member of the International Association of Art Critics. He is Visual Fine Arts Editor of Seisma Magazine, in which art meets science. He also writes regularly for Art Monthly and STATE and the Canadian magazine Border Crossings. He has a weekly column online for FAD Magazine and a monthly interview online for Artlyst. Paul has curated more than 40 shows, including NatureMax at GIANT in 2021-22. He recently published ‘The Book of Ladders’ in collaboration with Mexico-based sculptor Adeline de Monseignat. His darkly humorous photo-poems addressing cancer, The Death Suite, are also due to be published – probably posthumously … www.paulsartworld.blogspot.com | @paulcareykent

SEISMA Magazine is a publication exploring synergies between the sciences and the arts with the aim of sparking further interdisciplinary exchange and innovation. To encourage and facilitate these exchanges, SEISMA runs an online platform, publishes a biannual print and digital edition, and supports collaborative working through SciArts commissions. www.seismamag.com | @seismamag

All images shown courtesy of the artists and GIANT Gallery © 2023 Photography by Ed Hill © 2023 Ed Hill. All rights reserved.

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