Abstract
All There Was comprised an exhibition featuring five sculptural art works, a co-written publication and a gallery performance. The work sought to conceptualise the invisible features of the universe through a post-Newtonian orrery of sculptures.
The five sculptures were individual and collaborative works by artists Ole Hagen and David Cheeseman, including a concertina black board that was unfolded and then used in a live conversation and drawing performance between Hagen and astrophysicist Roberto Trotta. Trotta’s use of the language of equations and diagrams was paralleled by Hagen’s figurative imagery in an exchange on recently discovered features of the universe. At the intersection of the overlapping fields of speculative theory and visual thinking in art and science, the enquiry explored the possibilities and problems of three-dimensional representation of the newest scientific observations. It asked how the often invisible post-Newtonian features of the universe could be modelled in sculptural artworks, which serve as provocation.
Moving between artistic practice and Trotta’s work with the Astrophysics Group at Imperial College, London, which focused on dark matter, dark energy and the Big Bang, the collaboration attempted to devise an innovative means with which to represent invisible features of the universe in sculptural form. The researchers created and tested prototypes using the combination of mathematical and artistic investigation and, through the exhibition, demonstrated that three dimensional models can highlight how our embodied understanding of the world colours the perception of new abstract ideas.
The exhibition was first shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2015), the performance taking place on the opening night. The work was subsequently included in the catalogue publication ‘fig-2: 50 Projects in 50 Weeks’ (2018).
The five sculptures were individual and collaborative works by artists Ole Hagen and David Cheeseman, including a concertina black board that was unfolded and then used in a live conversation and drawing performance between Hagen and astrophysicist Roberto Trotta. Trotta’s use of the language of equations and diagrams was paralleled by Hagen’s figurative imagery in an exchange on recently discovered features of the universe. At the intersection of the overlapping fields of speculative theory and visual thinking in art and science, the enquiry explored the possibilities and problems of three-dimensional representation of the newest scientific observations. It asked how the often invisible post-Newtonian features of the universe could be modelled in sculptural artworks, which serve as provocation.
Moving between artistic practice and Trotta’s work with the Astrophysics Group at Imperial College, London, which focused on dark matter, dark energy and the Big Bang, the collaboration attempted to devise an innovative means with which to represent invisible features of the universe in sculptural form. The researchers created and tested prototypes using the combination of mathematical and artistic investigation and, through the exhibition, demonstrated that three dimensional models can highlight how our embodied understanding of the world colours the perception of new abstract ideas.
The exhibition was first shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2015), the performance taking place on the opening night. The work was subsequently included in the catalogue publication ‘fig-2: 50 Projects in 50 Weeks’ (2018).
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | ICA Studio, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London |
| Publication status | Published - May 2015 |
