CURRENT RESEARCH PROPOSAL
A four-year programme of collaborative arts/science research linking the creation of sculpture and sound installations to both historical and contemporary meterological studies of changes to weather and climate.
This programme of research linking Universities at Brighton, Reading and Bergen brings together areas of specialist expertise in art, design and music (University of Brighton) and mathematics, meteorology and Earth Science (Universities of Reading and Bergen). The proposal further develops issues raised by earlier exploratory enquiries via the Spring Group, set up at Brighton in 2005. It will generate a series of exhibitions and web-based audio-visuals and will also provide resources to recruit two PhD students and research assistants.
Three main issues will be explored:
a) The Interface of Collaboration — The analysis of processes of collaboration between arts and science disciplines and how to rigorously explore the unforeseen and unpredictable knowledge produced by them;
b) Instability: The Edge of Chaos — The possible changes to arts and science thinking when confronting recent mathematical theories concerning chaos theory and the phenomenon of ‘self-organised criticality’, linked with the potentially devastating effects of this phenomenon upon the individual, society and the environment;
c) Cyclone — The use of contemporary three-dimensional digital printing to examine a specific ground-breaking historical example of understanding, visualizing and mapping based on the complex mathematics of weather processes, first produced in Norway in 1919.
THE DETAILS
There is a long history of interdisciplinary links between artists and scientists — often resulting in arresting visual demonstrations of natural processes. However, recent developments in mathematics and physics have pushed our knowledge of the world beyond what is visible or spectacular. (The measurement of cosmic rays in the Hadron Collider at CERN is just one recent example). How can art and design visualize and communicate such phenomena meaningfully to a general public? Might this in turn reshape the current paradigms of art practice into unfamiliar territories? Much current mathematical thinking is based on chaos theory and recent ideas about ‘inherent instability’. A critical ‘tipping point’ of instability can be described and predicted through mathematical formulae that can demonstrate similar mechanisms of instability in a variety of apparently unrelated phenomena. Occurances can be seen in nature with avalanches or volcanic eruptions; events in society such as economic or regime change; or on a physical individual level, as in the development of a heart attack. Can an understanding of this process of ‘self-organised criticality’ be used to create meaningful art installations that reveal ‘tipping points’ both in the research processes used to develop them and meaningful emotional responses for the viewer?
Scientists collect and store huge amounts of data. Artists around the world are devising new ways to repicate this in sensual form such as sound, touch, colour or visible objects. Such methods can assist understanding and generate a more powerful sensory impact than is possible through conventional information systems such as graphs and statistical texts.
To test this, contemporary three-dimensional digital processes will be used to give currency to a specific ground breaking historical example of understanding:
The first visualization and mapping of the complex turbulence of weather.
This historical example is the earliest archived three-dimensional weather map, forming the basis of current meteorology (Jacob Bjerknes, Model of a Cyclone, Bergen 1919). The process of new digital research will result in an installation that utilizes scientific data but also as ‘sculpture’ has its own integrity, one that reaches beyond a mere illustration of a scientific principle to have deep relevance for both arts and science specialists and the general public.
Interested in finding out more? Go to CONTACT page
Charlie Hooker 2011
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