Material Sight: A Sensorium for Fundamental Physics
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Often our attempts to connect to the spatial and temporal scales of fundamental physics - from the subatomic to the multiverse - provoke a form of perceptual vertigo, especially for non-scientists. When we approach ideas of paralysing abstraction through the perceptual range of our sensing bodies, a ‘phenomenological dissonance’ can be said to be invoked, between material presence and radical remoteness. This relational dynamic, between materiality and remoteness, formed the conceptual springboard for 'Material Sight' (2016-2018), a research project based at three world-leading facilities for fundamental physics, that brought to fruition a body of photographic objects, film works and immersive soundscape that re-presented the spaces of fundamental physics as sites of material encounter. The research was premised on a paradoxical desire to create a sensorium for fundamental physics, asking if photography, film and sound can embody the spaces of experimental science and present them back to scientists and non-scientists alike, not as illustrations of the technical sublime but as sites of phenomenological encounter. This article plots the key conceptual coordinates of 'Material Sight' and looks at how the project’s methodological design – essentially the production of knowledge through the 'act of looking' – emphatically resisted the gravitational pull of art to be instrumentalised as an illustrative device within scientific contexts.
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(c) Fiona Crisp, 2020
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Fiona Crisp, Northumbria University Newcastle
Fiona Crisp is Professor of Fine Art at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK where she is a founder member of 'The Cultural Negotiation of Science', a research group that brings together artists, academics and research students whose practices engage with expert cultures across a broad spectrum of science and technology. Crisp’s practice resides at the intersection of photography, sculpture and architecture where the limits and capabilities of both photography and video are explored through the making of large-scale installations. For the past decade she has been working with institutions and individuals involved in fundamental science, most recently via the research project 'Material Sight'. Crisp’s work is represented by Matt’s Gallery London and is held in several national permanent collections in the UK including Tate, the British Council, Arts Council and the Government Art Collection.
References
Bower, R., Crisp, F., Swinbank, M. (2016) Visualisations in Cosmology [online] Available at: https://materialsight.wordpress.com/
Born, G., and A. Barry. 2010. ART-SCIENCE. Journal of Cultural Economy 3 (1): 103–19.
Crisp, F. 2009–2010. Subterrania. Gateshead, UK: BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Impressions Gallery, Newlyn Art Gallery, UK.
Crisp, F. 2015. Negative Capability: Imaging and Imagining Fundamental Science Through Productive Doubt.
GeoHumanities (American Association of Geographers), Volume 1 (1):188-197
Doubleday, R. 2007. Organizing accountability: Co-production of technoscientific and social worlds in a nanoscience laboratory. Area 39 (2): 166–75.
Malina, R. 2018 in Crisp, F. and Triscott, N. eds. (2018) The Live Creature and Et-hereal Things: Physics in Culture. London: Arts Catalyst: 47-49
Townsend, C. 2009. Fiona Crisp Hyper Passive. London: Matt’s Gallery.
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