Heliocentric exhibited as part of ‘Measure’ at New Media Gallery, Vancouver, Canada. The exhibition asks the question: how do we measure and track the movements of our world through space and time? The exhibition runs from 24th September – 10th December 2023.
The View from Nowhere exhibited as part of Dark Matters, Science Gallery Melbourne, 5 August – 2 December 2023. Co-curated by Mónica Bello, Head of Arts at CERN and Tilly Boleyn, Head of Curatorial at Science Gallery Melbourne in collaboration with a curatorial panel of young people. In collaboration with Arts at CERN.
2023, kinetic sculpture (brass, motors, gears, programming)
Helicase is a permanent site-specific sculpture created for the library at UK artificial intelligence company DeepMind’s headquarters, Kings Cross, London.
Taking as its point of departure the Double Helix, a scientific symbol embedded in our collective consciousness, Helicase consists of a vertical array of horizontal brass pendulums which rotate slowly to generate interrelating wave-forms in a double-helix formation.
The winding and unwinding motion of the pendulums, a sequence of actions which is realised through a simple algorithm, mimics the way that Helicase enzymes spin DNA to replicate it.
The rod and ball pendulums, similar to those used in scientific wave-form modelling machines, play with our visual perceptions while our brain attempts to read the shifting forms, reminding us of the human tendency towards pattern recognition, one of the key foundations of AI machine-learning.
Commissioner: DeepMind
Curator: Modus Operandi
Fabrication: millimetre
Solo exhibition ‘Parting the Waves’ at Gnration, Braga, Portugal, 27 May – 19 August 2023. Including a masterclass with Semiconductor 27 May 2023.
Group exhibition Creating the Commons at VU Art Science Gallery, 11 May – 31 October 2023
Semiconductor solo exhibition, Schafhof – European Art Forum Upper Bavaria, 22 April and 25 June, 2023.
20 Hz exhibited as part of group show Visualiser le Son at Lavoir Numerique, Gentilly, France, March 10th to August 13th, 2023.
Black Rain and Brilliant Noise screened as part of Celestial Objects: Cosmos and Cinema, a programme of films exploring how filmmakers have approached the appearance and mysteries of the universe since the origins of cinema. At Vilaseco, Spain, curated by Andrea Franco, 4th March and tbc June.
Visions Come True, Group show, K11 Chi Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2nd March – 28th May 2023. Including live streamed artist talk.
Spectral Constellations exhibited at International Film Festival Rotterdam, JOEY RAMONE Gallery, 27 January – 5 February 2023, as part of the Art Directions programme. Semiconductor talk event at the exhibition 5:30pm – 6:30pm CET, Friday 27 January, tickets available here.
Residency at the Analogue Modelling lab, Royal Holloway University, extending research begun in 2016 when making Earthworks. The lab uses a technique of pressure and motion to simulate tectonic and seismic forces; reproducing the generation and evolution of landscapes over thousands of years. Working with the lab equipment Semiconductor will create a series of tests for new works exploring how we might model future geologies.
20 Hz shown as part of ART MACHINES Movienight, an evening curated by Dutch Media Art pioneer Edwin van der Heide with works from the LIMA collection, Thursday, 8 December, 20:30 – 23:00, at De Havenloods, Utrecht, VOGELFREI. More info here.
Residency with UK policy LAB, MANIFEST, a pilot initiative, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), to evaluate how artists might use their skills and experience to improve how we make policy.
Speaker at the inaugural National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange Festival of Cultural Knowledge Exchange which takes place from 10 – 14 October 2022. Talk available listen to on soundcloud here.
Exhibiting as part of ‘ The Sound of Colour’ at Arthouse Jersey, 11th-29th October.
Exhibiting as part of touring exhibition Unheimlich Fantastisch: E.T.A. Hoffmann 2022, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Hoffmann’s death 2022 at:
Ausstellungsräume Staatsbibliothek Bamberg: 25 July – 22 October 2022
Stabi Kulturwerk Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin: 17 August – 02 November 2022
Deutsches Romantik-Museum Frankfurt am Main: 24 November 2022 – 12 February 2023 https://etahoffmann.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/etah2022/
Semiconductor artists-in-residence with the Extreme Light Group, University of Glasgow, School of Physics & Astronomy. Lead scientific partner: Prof. Daniele Faccio, residency curator: Sarah Cook.
Launch of the #ArtsatCERN10 Podcast in celebration of the 10th anniversary of Arts at CERN. For the podcast Semiconductor are in conversation with CERN theoretical physicist (and previous Semiconductor collaborator) John Ellis. The podcast explores the works which resulted from Semiconductor’s time at CERN – the large scale installation HALO and the film The View from Nowhere – the use of data as artistic material and the limits of scientific research.
Hosted by Ana Prendes, Communications and Content Producer at Arts at CERN.
Listen to the episode here: https://bit.ly/ArtsatCERNpodcast or via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts.
Semiconductor interviewed for new Sussex-based magazine ROSA (Review of Sussex Arts). ROSA is a quarterly print magazine featuring Sussex arts, Sussex arts shows and Sussex artists, past and present.
Morphogenic Movements, a new Semiconductor commission for Novartis Pavillon zero energy media façade, Basel. Commissioned by Novartis. Curated by Sabine Himmelsbach, HEK Basel. Viewable on the building exterior for one year from May 2022 – April 2023.
Through the AEgIS exhibited as part of the Indivisible group show, New Media Gallery, Vancouver.
Talk at Sónar Lisboa 2022 as part of the Sónar +D programme to coincide with the exhibition of Earthworks. Available to watch here.
2022, Real-time generative animations for media façade
Morphogenic Movements, is a series of three real-time generative animations which transform the Novartis Pavillon media façade into a self-organising system. Through the generation of cell-like forms which emerge from visual noise, the artwork explores self-organisation as a contemporary scientific method for understanding complex systems as coherent wholes.
Self-organisation refers to the emergence of an overall order in time and space of a given system, that results from the collective interactions of its individual components. This concept has been widely recognized as a core principle in pattern formation for multi-component systems of the physical, chemical and biological world, from galaxies to living cells. Historically much of the success of the sciences has relied on a reductionist approach, in which complex systems are taken apart to examine the individual components and how they interact.
By employing algorithms which generate noise and feedback loops, the real-time animations simulate conditions associated with naturally occurring self-organising systems. Within this ‘environment’ we have encouraged the manifestation of properties observed in the dynamic evolution of these systems, such as spontaneous formation of patterns, unpredictability, waves and oscillations, so that the way the forms move, evolve and interact, feels organic, constantly shifting and mutating. Through the correlations and fluctuations of these processes order emerges from chaos, in the form of cell-like patterns, which are observed in many underlying structures of the natural physical world, particularly in biological life-forms.
Morphogenic Movements was commissioned for the Novartis Pavillon zero energy media façade. The façade is made from a network of 30,000 LED cores, powered by 10,000 energy-generating solar panels that light up at night.
The Novartis Pavillon is a learning, event and exhibition space in Basel on the Novartis campus, and is the first building on the site that is open to the public.
Commissioned by Novartis. Curated by Sabine Himmelsbach, HEK Basel.
Media Façade designed by iart with AMDL Circle.
Earthworks exhibited at Sónar Lisboa 2022, returning to the festival 6 years after it premiered at the Barcelona edition in 2016.
Semiconductor interviewed by Joe Muggs for Sound of Life magazine.
Over a period of 2 years, from 2019-2021 we were artists in residence with the Planet Disk Connection Group, University of Dundee, Scotland. We visited and met with scientists whose research explores planet formation environments, and carried out research at our studio.
As well as trying to absorb the overall scientific and technological approach, we filtered areas of specific personal interest; the methods used to capture light from distant stars, the processes it goes through via layers of physical translation, the data that is produced, what the data can tell us and how the team employed time in their observations. In our artworks we’re interested in creating experiences of the matter being studied framed through the scientific and technological devices that are used to study it. We do this to not only explore the capacity of humankind to create an understanding of the physical world but to reflect on our place in it. We were interested in the processes, tools and devices used to study the matter as much as the matter itself.
We spent time with the PDCG researchers, absorbing their modes of working, particular areas of interest and inquiry. This sketch which Aurora Sicilia Aguilar (University of Dundee researcher in star formation and protoplanetary disks) used in one of her presentations, became one of the touchstones for our early research. It shows how ‘shadows cast by material very close to a star can be projected onto the surrounding nebula as if it were a giant screen’, we are shown a ‘view from Earth’ and a ‘side view’ from some position in space. This idea of viewpoint is something we are always fascinated by, how we are bound by our physical positioning on planet Earth rotating around the Sun, or by our sensory limitations in only being able to see a portion of light waves for example. We reflect on how these impact our everyday experiences of the physical world, this often involves stepping outside of ourselves and intentionally entering a space of unknowing.
In our studio back in Brighton we researched the science and technologies behind spectroscopy and more specifically the spectroscopic instruments whose data the scientists analyse in their research. These include the HARPS and FEROS spectroscopes, located at La Silla Observatory, Chile. (We were due to visit these in November 2019 for another project, which was quite serendipitous, but it was unfortunately cancelled due to the Chile uprising.) It’s quite easy to access all the hardware and technical documents once you start searching and they’re invaluable for getting a thorough understanding.
Our research took us down many paths, including looking into waveguides, prisms and optics, ways of guiding, dispersing and projecting light. We like to thoroughly pick apart the scientific and technical process as part of our research, not only to get a good understanding of the subject we are working with, but to have a good handle on the raw materials to build with, from the ground up. This way we can draw together multiple strands in an intuitive way informed by the research.
We explored the European Space Observatory (ESO) data archives, accessing and learning about the spectrograph data from a wide range of ESO spectroscopes. This involved trawling through archives and learning about the different techniques for presenting spectroscopic information collected of light from forming stars and planets, as visual data.
We created a log of observatories, instruments, calibration processes, spectrograph techniques and targets used by Dundee.
Spectrograph of target Ex LUPI taken by the SINFONI (Spectrograph for Integral Observations in the Near Infrared) instrument at the European Space Observatory, Chile. Each instrument collates the dispersed light in a differing visual configuration, which lays the capturing process bare.
Post-doctoral researcher Justyn Campbell White took us through spectral numerical data; what it is, how it exists and how we can access it. We learnt about the software he’s creating to compare information from the same target over periods of time, this is the key to resolving information about structures around young stars. The waveform plots flux or light intensity over light wave.
In the studio we accessed numerical waveform data for different targets and instruments and comparing, to get a good understanding of it. We gathered materials, data and techniques to experiment with, considering the numerical data as a way to bring time into the process, using the flux to give rhythm.
To create Spectral Constellations, the work which evolved from this residency, we employed animation software which we can realise in real-time. This new software was quite different to the software we had used previously, which was laborious and time-consuming, requiring the rendering animations, it’s more immediate and lent itself to a feeling closer to sculpting light, with instant results to programming and manipulation. Our practice always sees us pushing the technology we use to learn its limitations and find a space where our own language can emerge. Into this software we introduced some of the emission line data we collected during our research to see what it brought to the table both physically and conceptually. We also played with introducing other external materials which guide and manipulate the light based on the capturing techniques scientists employ to study light emissions.
The STAR-MELT paper that the scientists have written on the software they have developed to study emission lines of young stellar objects was accepted for publishing while we were on our residency. This helped consolidate and reinforce our research, focusing in on what’s important in their endeavour and describing the technicalities of how they work with the data they collect. It also introduced a new way of working with the data over time. This paper becomes instrumental in setting our direction of investigating the spectral data as a physical material to work with – light and time in the form of animation.
The residency culminated in the creation of a three LED panel artwork. The LEDs display generative animations, driven by scientific data of young stars. Taking the Spectroscopy data of gas and dust structures around distant young stars, which comes together to form planets.
We worked directly with Spectral data from the European Space Observatory archive (http://archive.eso.org/)
You can read more about Spectral Constellations here.
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Semiconductor feature in Wired Middle East on Spectral Constellations, February 2022 issue
Invited to speak at a 3-day online Digital Arts exchange forum created by Future Everything & the British Council, bringing together art professionals from the UK & Jordan to explore arts and digital practices, 21st February 2022
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During our three months residency at CERN we took time to explore every nook of the vast site, we learnt so much about the history of CERN this way and connected with people we wouldn’t have ordinarily crossed paths with. There’s a tower we sneaked into to get a good view of part of the main campus.
Luis Alvarez Gaume is a theorist and was our scientific partner. We had our weekly therapy sessions with him where he would turn the physical laws of the universe, as we knew them, on their head and constantly pull the rug from under our feet. He kept us on our toes, and you can hear him dissecting science and scales of human experience in our work The View from Nowhere.
John Ellis guided us on our explorations into theories around The Standard Model. He was kind and generous allowing us to fumble our way around the complex world they inhabit. He too is in the View from Nowhere
We asked to have a tour of the workshop. They’re creating prototype parts for various experiments employing incredible skill and time-consuming processes to nudge and force metal into various forms and structures. It became clear that at CERN they are pushing the envelope at every level, operating at the limits of human endeavours, both technologically and empirically. Here we are at the workshop where they learnt to ignore us over the couple of weeks we filmed in there.
In building 180 we bore witness to the sheer scale CERN is working at, these limits of human endeavour, what surprised us was how the language of theory, essentially mathematics came to be the creative, malleable and playful language whereas the real world materials of technology were hard and fixed and difficult to move and control. We played with this contrast in our moving image work The View from Nowhere.
Hanging out in the theory department we couldn’t aim to understand their discussions but tried to absorb their methods, interactions, languages and endeavours.
Anita Hollier welcomed our request to visit the archive and have a poke around.
The archive holds collections of past scientists’ physical notebooks and paperwork.
In the archive we went looking for evidence of the human signature in the capturing process.
This is an ATLAS data image in Root. Beginnings of thinking about ATLAS data and how we might be able to work with it / access it / in what way we would work with it of thinking about HALO.
As a result of our residency we were given the opportunity to propose a large-scale idea for Audemars Piguet Commission at Art Basel.
Arts at CERN: https://arts.cern
CERN: https://home.cern
ATLAS experiment: https://atlas.cern
Experimental Particle Physics Research Group, University of Sussex: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/epp/research/aod
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We had spotted the materials processing lab on the Mineral Science Laboratories website and were keen to try and spend some time there, meeting scientists and researching and observing how they create an understanding of the physical origins of earthly matter. We applied to SARF (Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship) and then had to convince the scientists they should welcome artists into the lab.
The scientists in the mineral science laboratory had a vote on whether to invite artists in, after a few months of us being there we were invited to be in the 100 years photo, as we “had earned the right to be there”.
We were in the lab every day, getting to know the people, collections, and their wider networks. A major subject of Bill Melson’s research was dedicated to listening to Arenal volcanoe, developing a vocabulary to document the sounds a volcano makes and see if it can help predict eruptions. He has a fascinating written and audio archive observing Arenal volcano in Costa Rica, we helped him to digitise some of his reel-to-reel audio recordings which also feature in Worlds in the Making.
Jeff Post has a deep understanding of the structure of mineral crystals and how and why they form the way they do. You can hear him describing these processes in our work Where Shapes Come From.
There were several people who took us under their wing, one of them was volcanologist Rick Wunderman. His door was always open to us and like several others his kindness and generosity extended beyond the lab and our research endeavors.
On residencies and fieldwork trips we always keep a daily log of research and activities…”Asked Dick if he would read out some of his research notes, he said yeah!”
Sorena Sorenson let us lose on her Cathode Luminescence Imager. We spent many a evening locked in the lab creating time lapse animations of glowing mineral crystals.
In the special books library with scientist Roy Clarke. He taught us about the Widmannstatten structure within meteorites.
We had free reign to explore the rock collection.
Volcano film archive waiting to be transferred. Scientists have been depositing their 16 mm films taken of volcanoes with the Smithsonian since the 1920’s! We helped advise on transferring them and they feature in our work Volcano Observatory.
We had been patiently waiting for a meteor to be sliced so we could film the process, the time had arrived!
We worked our way round the laboratory meeting all the scientists.
We spent many hours filming Dick Fiske processing his lava samples from Hawaii, for our work Worlds in the Making.
Smithsonian Artists Research Fellowship: https://www.si.edu/sarf
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History: https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/mineral-sciences
Smithsonian Mineral Sciences Research: https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/mineral-sciences/research
Smithsonian Institution: https://www.si.edu
In 2010 we went to the Galapagos Islands and mainland Ecuador as part of the Gulbenkian Galapagos Artist residency. We were developing an artwork which explores how humans observe, document and create an understanding of the origins of the physical world around us and we had been looking for an opportunity to visit volcanic landscapes and observe volcanologists, we were lucky to be offered this residency along with a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship at the Mineral Sciences Laboratory in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History later the same year. This research, explorations and filming became our artwork Worlds in the Making.
The residency involved spending 7 days on a boat with a Galapagos natural history guide, who took us to many of the Galapagos Islands to learn about the landscapes, animals, history of and environmental approach to the Galapagos Archipelago.
We stayed in Isla Isabela for a week and trekked up to volcanic landscapes at Volcan Chico and to the old Sulphur Mines, to film them.
Filming at the old sulphur mines on Volcan Azufre, which appears in our work Worlds in the Making. Volcanologist Dick Fiske from the Mineral Sciences Lab can also be heard reading a description of a scientists exploration to, and study of, the sulphur mines at Volcan Azufre, which we found in the Charles Darwin Research Station Library (see below).
The library was a fascinating resource, every scientist who came to study on the Galapagos Islands were obliged to donate the scientific papers from their research conducted there.
We spent a week at the Charles Darwin Research station on the Island of Santa Cruz. Visiting scientists stay here to carry out studies into wide ranging subjects from invasive marine species to the restoration of ecosystems.
We spent a day with Jorge and his team, filming his processes of collecting data on the invasive blackberry. This became our work Indefatigable.
Back on mainland Ecuador we had arranged to meet volcanologists at the University of Quito.
At the University of Quito we learned about one of the sites we would visit, the Volcano Observatory in Banos where they observe the active Volcano Tungurahua, you can see a drawing of it in this image.
They use a mix of digital and analogue methods to study Tungurahua including this make shift technique for estimating the height of the volcanic plume in kilometres.
The scientist’s hand-make carbon paper for their seismographs, they taught us how to do it. They like using paper seismographs as they can hear when the needle frantically scratches the paper alerting them to an eruption.
During our time in Banos we spent a few nights in this hut, opposite the volcano, the clouds rarely cleared for any decent filming but the whole building would shake with the boom of eruptions.
During our couple of weeks in Banos, the host where we were staying decided to organise a screening of our artworks at the only place in town which owned a projector. It was an incredible experience, a mixture of locals of all ages and tourists including some teenagers from a local village who would attend a computer club on a Saturday morning to access digital tools for making work. We talked about the works in English, someone would translate into Spanish and there would be all sorts of questions flying around, we remember it as a highly charged excitable affair, we hope we inspired.
The University of Quito also sent us on trip with their engineers for a few days, who were mending one of the seismic stations. We were under falling ash and the camera lens became crunchy.
We visited Cotopaxi, the world’s highest active volcano. You must climatise to the height before attempting to climb it. We made it to the snow line. Others we were staying with made an overnight trek to the top which sounded pretty harrowing, it was incredibly windy.
Galapagos Residency Publication: https://gulbenkian.pt/uk-branch/publication/galapagos/
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation: https://gulbenkian.pt/uk-branch/
Article on Semiconductor’s Galapagos residency: https://gulbenkian.pt/uk-branch/gulbenkian-galapagos-artists-residency/
Galapagos Conservation Trust: https://galapagosconservation.org.uk
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We will be giving a presentation at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland, 14th December 2021
20Hz shown as part of Third Thursdays, Brighton City centre film trail, 20th January 2022, in the window of Knoops at 42 Market Street (The Lanes). Curated by Videoclub.
Spectral Constellations. Solo Show. Mills Observatory, Dundee.
2021
variable dimensions / generative animations on LED mosaics
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Spectral Constellations is a series of generative animations, driven by scientific data of young stars. This data, collected by scientists using a method called Spectroscopy, creates an understanding of structures around distant young stars, where gas and dust come together to form planets. Scientists study the light this matter emits using prisms to split it into its constituent wavelengths, revealing its elemental make-up. By analysing this data over time, spatial formations of the matter can be decoded.
Semiconductor have worked with this spectral data as a physical material, translating it into rings of light which resemble the gradiated discs of planetary and stellar formations. As the data ebbs and flows it introduces a sense of form and motion, waveforms merge and interfere revealing patterns and rhythms, and engage our human tendency towards pattern recognition. The fragmented LED mosaics provide partial windows from which the spectral data shifts and shimmers to create a raw visual experience.
Spectral Constellations was commissioned through a residency with the Planet Disk Connection group and DJCAD at the University of Dundee, Scotland. It has received funding from STFC (Science and Technology Facilities Council), “The planet-disk connection”, (grant number ST/S000399/1) and “Reading between the lines”, grant number (ST/V002058/1).
Thanks to the European Space Observatory archive (http://archive.eso.org/) whose spectral data was used in this artwork.
Special thanks to:
Aurora Sicilia Aguilar, University of Dundee
Justyn Campbell White, University of Dundee
Adam Lockhart, University of Dundee
Read about Semiconductor’s residency with the Planet Disk Connection group at University of Dundee here.
Semiconductor, Tolbooth Gallery, Stirling, Scotland. Solo show. Exhibiting Parting the Waves and Black Rain.
Au-delà du réel ?, Nemo Festival, 104-Paris, France. Group show exhibiting, Earthworks, 20Hz and Where Shapes Come From.
Temporal Stack, The Deep Sensor, Research Centre of Contemporary Visual Art, Guizhou Normal University, Guizhou, China. Group show. Exhibiting As the World Turns.
Animated Science, Fredrikstad Animation Festival, Norway. Screening Magnetic Movie
DOK Leipzig, 64th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. Screening ‘The making of Earthworks‘.
To the Edge of Time, University Library KU Leuven, Belgium. Group show exhibiting HALO 0.1 / 0.2 / 0.3.
HALO exhibition presented by John Hansard Gallery at MAST Mayflower Studios, Southampton, UK.
Bienal de la Ciencia, Cosmocaixa, Barcelona. Group Show exhibiting Through the AEgIS.
A ‘making of HALO’ presentation to the Feedback Musicianship Network.
Semiconductor included in The Art of Science publication by
HALO’s UK premiere at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA), University of Sussex, Brighton as part of Brighton Festival.
We are excited to be collaborating with Leap Then Look, Lighthouse, University of Brighton and ACCA to present a programme of free online workshops and events to accompany the HALO exhibition.
In conversation with Laura McDermott from Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts for our Fabrica Earthworks exhibition, watch the full talk here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M9MEP6ZiYP4
Solo exhibition at Fabrica, Brighton, 10 October – 22 November 2020 featuring Earthworks
Ecodata-Ecomedia-Ecoaesthetics, RIXC Art Science Festival 2020, Riga (Latvia), 8 October – 17 November 2020, The National Library of Latvia
Semiconductor are exhibiting The View from Nowhere as part of Quantica group show, Kumu Art Museum Tallinn, Estonia.
Exhibiting 20Hz as part of 6×6/36 at the Riga Photography Festival, Riga Art Space, 11 September – 18 October 2020
Semiconductor are exhibiting HALO 0.1, 0.2 + 0.3 as part of Quantica group show, Le Lieu Unique, Nantes, France.
Making of HALO film featured as part of Southampton Science and Engineering Festival (SOTSEF) Goes Digital and also online as part of John Hansard Gallery’s digital programme in advance of John Hansard Gallery presenting HALO in 2021
UK premiere of HALO at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, as part of Brighton Festival, 2 – 6 May 2020 – Unfortunately this has been postponed due to coronavirus
Fracture Patterns, our collaboration with Eartheater will be performed at Rewire Festival, The Hague.
Semiconductor will be giving a public talk on their work at Southampton Science and Engineering Festival. Unfortunately this has been postponed due to the Coronavirus.
Semiconductor are exhibiting The View from Nowhere as part of Quantica group show, NTMoFA (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts), Taichung, Taiwan.
Semiconductor will be exhibiting in Invisible, Science Gallery Dublin, 13 March – 31 May 2020 [re-scheduled due to Coronavirus for July 2020, dates tbc]
A programme of works by Semiconductor will be screened as part of DISTO LOGIC at the Theâtre d’Orléans, Orléans, France, on 7 March
Semiconductor are exhibiting The View from Nowhere as part of Quantica group show, iMAL, Brussels, Belgium.
Magnetic Movie will be screened as part of the opening event of the London Short Film Festival, ICA, 6:30, Friday 10 Jan, 2020
Screening 20Hz, Black Rain, Magnetic Movie and All the Time in the World at SOLA, Helsinki, an annual festival for experimental music and moving image
2019
Live multi-media
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Fracture Patterns is a live collaboration between Semiconductor and New York musician and producer Eartheater. Combining Semiconductor’s large-scale multi-channel video works with an original live soundtrack and performance by Eartheater, Fracture Patterns culminates in a compelling theatrical production.
Exploring resonances between their respective practices Fracture Patterns brings together Eartheater’s approach to working with the materiality of sound, with Semiconductor’s work with scientific data to examine very fabric of the physical world. Fracture Patterns harnesses Semiconductor and Eartheater’s capacity to create works which blur the boundaries between digital and analogue to convey both a feeling of bespoke intimacy and of awe-inspiring humbling power.
Eartheater’s soundtrack conveys the noisy messy chaos of nature and becomes an extension of the elements in Semiconductor’s films, her voice like a disrupted signal struggling with the overwhelming power of nature. Fracture Patterns investigates the spectrum between empirical research and human emotion, between dissonance and harmony, the human and the machine.
Fracture Patterns in an original commission by Outlands Network, supported by Arts Council England and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
For more information about the tour go to www.outlands.network/fracture-patterns-eartheater-semiconductor
Semiconductor will take part in From Creativity to Cosmology: Understanding Space Through Art panel discussion, as part of Where Language Ends: Antony Gormley exhibition events series, Royal Academy of Arts, Chaired by John O’Shea Head of Programming Science Gallery London, £15/£19 Wednesday 27 November, 18.30 – 19.45
Black Rain will be exhibited as part of Brighton Digital Festival exhibition Desire Lines, University of Brighton Edward St campus.
Semiconductor will be giving a public talk on their work as part of Brighton Digital Festival. University of Brighton City Campus – Edward St, Brighton, UK. 2:00pm – 3:30pm.
The View from Nowhere will be screened at The 12th Imagine Science Film Festival, New York.
The View From Nowhere has been selected to be screened at the fifth edition of InScience (international science film festival). The festival will take place from 6 to 10 November 2019, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Semiconductor solo exhibition as part of the The 14th Media Art Biennale Santiago, Chile. Semiconductor at the National Center of Contemporary Arts, (CNAC), Santiago, Chile.
The View from Nowhere will be screening at Seoul International New Media Festival 2019.
Semiconductor will be presenting two film works and giving a lecture at MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome as part of their video art programme, July 2019
Semiconductor will be exhibiting at the Science Gallery London as part of the Dark Matter exhibition from 6 June to 26 August 2019
Semiconductor will be keynote speaker at Ecstatic Truth – Truth of Matter: process and perception in expanded animation practice alongside Dryden Goodwin, University of Westminster, May 16 2019
Three HALO editions acquired for private collection.
The Technological Sublime, Semiconductor solo show at City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand.
Semiconductor are exhibiting The View from Nowhere as part of Broken Symmetries group touring show, Le Lieu Unique, Nantes.
Semiconductor are exhibiting The View from Nowhere as part of Quantica group show, CCCB, Barcelona.
UK touring performance Fracture Patterns in collaboration with Eartheater, commissioned by Outlands and De La Warr Pavillion, throughout June starting Thursday 13 June at the De La Warr Pavilion. For further dates and booking go to: www.outlands.network/fracture-patterns-eartheater-semiconductor
Three channel Brilliant Noise installed as part of the group show D’un soleil à l’autre at Base Sous-Marine, Bordeaux, France.
Semiconductor participation in H2O (Human Horizons Observatory) Art and Science summit 2019, Patagonia, Argentina. In association with British Council and AND Festival UK.
Semiconductor are the 2019 Art and Science President for the British Science Association. They are giving the presidential talk at the British Science Festival, Coventry, 12pm-1pm, Tuesday 10th September (free, booking required), the festival runs from 10 – 13 September 2019
Earthworks installation at Recombinant Festival, San Francisco.
Semiconductor are exhibiting The View from Nowhere as part of Broken Symmetries group touring show, FACT, Liverpool.
Where Shapes Come From exhibited at Hong-Gah Musuem, Taiwan as part of The 6th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition 2018.
Semiconductor presentation at Arttech Forum, Geneva, Switzerland. With Monica Bello, Head of Arts at CERN.
20Hz screening as part of Arica Nativa Film Festival, Chile.
Black Rain exhibited as part of the group exhibition, Concerning the Spiritual in Art , Museum fur Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, Germany.
Strata: Rocks, Dust, Stars, York Art Gallery in partnership with FACT. Group show exhibiting Worlds in the Making.
200 Nanowebbers screening at Animest, International Animation Festival, Bucharest, Romania.
20Hz screening at The Nightingale Cinema, Chicago
Where Shapes Come From in group show Nature as Data at Jing’an International Sculpture Park, Shanghai, China. Semiconductor will be giving a presentation at OCAT Shanghai, Sunday 11th November 2pm.
Brilliant Noise and Black Rain exhibited in the group show The Astrologer that fell into a well, CAS, Osaka
Parting the Waves exhibited as part of Fort Process a sound & art festival exploring the acoustic spaces and topography of Newhaven Fort, 12-11pm.
WIRED, July-Aug 2018
Financial Times Collecting- 11.06.2018
Art Monthly Australasia March 2018
Semiconductor presentation and screening of recent works at Wellington City Art Gallery, New Zealand.
Semiconductor exhibiting Where Shapes Come From in the group exhibition Hiding in plain sight at Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, The Netherlands.
Black Rain exhibited as part of the group exhibition DIA-LOGO, Ramon Llull and the ars combinatoria, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany.
2018
installation / various
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
HALO is a large scale immersive artwork which embodies Semiconductor’s ongoing fascination with how we experience the materiality of nature through the lens of science and technology.
Taking the form of a large cylinder, the structure houses a 360-degree projection of scientific data while an array of 384 vertical wires are played by the same data, to produce the sound. The work draws the viewer into its centre in order to inhabit the results of particle-collisions, produced by experiments taking place at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland.
The physics performed at the ATLAS detector probes and enhances our current understanding of the building blocks of matter and their interactions, contributing to new theories that better describe our universe. Semiconductor are the first to have received permission to work directly with raw data generated by the experiment. By using this data, the artists seek to convey the signature of the technology, the mark of the architecture of the experiment, or the presence of the scientist’s voice. They confront the viewer with the data before it has been processed for scientific consumption.
For many years the notion of engaging with scientific data as an artistic material has been central to the practice of Semiconductor, with a particular interest in how such information represents physical phenomena that exist beyond the limits of our daily experiences. Their projects stand as scientific and technological mediations of nature, giving data a physical form that transcends the matter it represents. The artists highlight the ways in which our experience of nature is influenced by technology and media, and ultimately question our place within it.
HALO has been conceived as an experiential reworking of the ATLAS detector, its experiments, and its data sets. The rotated cylindrical form and multiple cables are reminiscent of the architecture of the apparatus. The assemblage is suggestive of the technology and craftsmanship associated with scientific endeavour. Each collision in ATLAS occurs at close to the speed of light. Semiconductor have re-animated 60 of these, slowing time down immeasurably to reveal time in the ordinarily static data. Through doing this we are given space as viewers to analyse the mass of data. We naturally start to look for and see patterns in the data, and are given a sense of the immense task at hand for the scientists, in capturing, reading and processing the data.
Scientists often describe the particle collisions occurring at the LHC as recreating conditions thought to have existed in our universe shortly after the big bang; here Semiconductor have made an immersive experience of matter formation in the early universe that’s framed through the technological and scientific devices that are developed to study it. We are invited to consider the philosophical problems of our mediated understandings of science and of nature, while submitting ourselves completely to their technological sublime.
HALO was commissioned by Audemars Piguet for Art Basel 2018
Curated by Mónica Bello
In collaboration with CERN
HALO was fabricated by millimetre and Polyspace in collaboration with the artists.
Special thanks to:
Mónica Bello
Ash Brosnan
Dave Charlton
Matthew Ridsdale
Mark Sutton
Thanks:
Winka Angelrath, ATLAS collaboration, Frédérick Bordry, Julian Calo, Anita Hollier, Antonella De Santo, Steve Goldfarb, Peter Jenni, Rolf Landua, Stefano Maddelena, Andrew McPherson, millimetre, Sally Jane Norman, Matthew Ridsdale, Halldor Ulfarsson, Julian Weaver, Pippa Wells.
2018
x3 CG animations on square screens, silent
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Three animations made with raw data from the ATLAS detector at CERN particle physics laboratory, Geneva, Switzerland. Removed from its scientific framework, the data becomes a physical form in its own right, something to explore as an artistic medium. Each animation offers a different perspective of the data, presented on custom made square screens.
Semiconductor HALO launch, the 4th Audemars Piguet Commission at Art Basel, created through their residency at CERN
Semiconductor, Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth, Australia. In partnership with Revelation, Perth International Film Festival. Solo show, Brilliant Noise and Black Rain. Semiconductor talk at FAC on Friday 13th July, 2018
2018
13.29
single channel
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
As the World Turns is a moving image science fiction, which explores humankind’s place in time and space, through the science of radio astronomy.
Filmed at Goonhilly Earth Station, a satellite communications site in Cornwall, England, As the World Turns visually explores the location through hand-held camera footage, creating an intimate experience and suggesting the presence of a human observer. We are given an impression of the sites history, the achievements once gained, future endeavours and of technology and nature co-existing. The film provides a sense of the human firmly grounded in the landscape, yet looking out into space, framed by our view from the Earth and the technology developed and employed to create an understanding of it.
The narrator endeavours to find her place in the physical universe. Weaving together the personal, technical, philosophical, and profound: scientific descriptions, observational diary-like entries, existential reflections, natural philosophies and rambling declarations. Whilst switching between objective and subjective viewpoints, she explores the different voices the human race employ to interpret the natural physical world.
Working with radio astronomers from CUGA (Consortium of Universities for Goonhilly Astronomy) Semiconductor have accessed and visualised raw radio astronomy data, which extracts information about the formations of stars and can be used to learn about the origins of the universe. The data reveals the human signature in the capturing process through visual artefacts, noise and interference in the radio signal, and is used to raise philosophical questions about how we experience nature through the languages of science and technology.
The monologue has been informed either by elements associated with the science and history of radio astronomy, ideas of measurement and human interpretation, or quoted directly from scientific writings. For example; References to the ‘first dish popping and banging’ were drawn from a publication by the Radio Society of Great Britain, titled Amateur Radio Astronomy. Giving a history of the science, it describes Grote Reber building one of the earliest radio astronomy parabolic reflectors in his back yard near Chicago, U.S.A. Reber described how great volumes of water pouring through the central hole during a rainstorm caused rumours among the neighbours that the machine was for collecting water and controlling the weather; descriptions of “observational studies of young circumstellar discs” were quoted directly from the science paper ‘Planet Earth Building-Blocks – a Legacy e-MERLIN Survey’; and lists of fauna found at the Goonhilly site form part of the Cornwall Council report on Goonhilly Downs as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The more discursive elements such as “How do we know when it makes sense?…” are reminiscent of Buckminster Fuller’s voice, as he looks to the future and asserts his own world view.
Goonhilly Earth Station is in the process of transforming its original 26 metre antenna into a radio astronomy receiver. It will form part of the UK e-MERLIN network of radio dishes making it one of the most powerful radio telescopes in the World.
e-MERLIN data courtesy of Professor Melvin Hoare and Dr Katharine G. Johnston (University of Leeds). e-MERLIN is a National Facility operated by the University of Manchester at Jodrell Bank Observatory on behalf of STFC
Filming and sound: Semiconductor
Editor: Lucy Harris
Writer: Rowena Easton
Narrator: Rena Valeh
Music: Sarah-Jane Summers
Producer: Teresa Gleadowe
Assistant producer: Vickie Fear
Production assistants: Elsa Collinson and Josie Cockram
Accommodation: Kestle Barton
As the World Turns was commissioned by CAST for Groundwork in Cornwall in 2018
Produced by CAST
Groundwork was organised by CAST (Cornubian Arts & Science Trust) in partnership with Tate St Ives, Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange and Kestle Barton and was funded by an award from Arts Council England’s Ambition for Excellence scheme, with support from Freelands Foundation, Ampersand Foundation, Quercus Trust, Outset Contemporary Art Fund, Cornwall Council and Kestle Barton Trust.
As the World Turns was supported by funding for Groundwork from Arts Council England.
With assistance from:
Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd
Consortium of Universities for Goonhilly Astronomy (CUGA)
Special thanks to Teresa Gleadowe, Professor Melvin Hoare, Shaun Richardson
Thanks to: Dr Robert Beswick, Paula Bolton, Paul Dobbs, Dr Mark Gallaway, Goonhilly Heritage Society, Dr James Geach, Ian Jones, Dr Rob La Frenais, Des Prouse, Dr Mark Thompson, Piran Trezise
The script for As the World Turns contains extracts from the following:
Planet Earth Building-Blocks – a Legacy e-MERLIN Survey (PEBBLES)
Cornwall Council report on Goonhilly Downs as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) notified under Section 28 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981, as amended, 1993
2018
13:11
HD single channel
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
The View from Nowhere is a single-channel moving image work which explores humankind’s place in nature through the science and technology of CERN, the particle physics laboratory in Geneva.
Driven by an interest in the material nature of our physical world and how we experience it through the lens of science and technology, Semiconductor go looking for the techniques that are developed at CERN which ask fundamental questions about nature, and the languages which ensue to make sense of it.
Through juxtaposing discussions around the application and processes of theoretical physics with filmed footage in CERN’s hi-tech workshops, Semiconductor explore the dichotomy that is revealed between the surprisingly creative pursuit of theoretically modelling our physical universe and the fixed/hard classical nature of producing instrumentation to test these notions. It reveals a sense of the scientific frameworks we develop to explore matter beyond the limits of human experience, whilst raising questions about our place in the larger nature of reality.
The title The View from Nowhere refers to the philosophical concept that science should remain an objective analysis of the natural world, if it is to be seen as having value.
The View from Nowhere was co-commissioned by Arts at CERN/ FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool)/Le Lieu Unique, Nantes, France.
Special thanks to:
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé
Arts at CERN
Mónica Bello
René Brun
Engineers and technicians of the Large Magnet Facility CERN and ERN workshop
Panos Charitos
Michael Doser
John Ellis
Gian Giudice
Lucy Harris Editor
Anita Hollier
Rolf Landua
Sebastien Luzieux
Michelangelo Mangano
Matthew McCullough
Pierre Moyret
Jeremi Niedziela
Brian Powell
Frédéric Savary
Matteo Solfaroli
Davide Tommasini
James Wells
Groundwork, organised by CAST, Cornwall. Group Show exhibiting As the World Turns.
2017
16:34
HD single channel installation / silent
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Through the AEgIS* is a space-time-lapse which explores how we make sense of nature through the language of science.
Captured by the AEgIS experiment at CERN, which looks at how antimatter responds to gravity, you see pions, protons and nuclear fragments flying out from ‘annihilation sites’; these particles ionize a photographic plate which when developed reveals their trajectories as varying sized tracks.
Using a special microscope with a very shallow depth of field, the photographic image is re-captured in several stages; by shifting the focal plane in 2 micron steps, and by scanning across each layer in 1000’s of sections, this reveals a depth to the emulsion of forty layers and details that would otherwise remain unseen to the naked eye.
Working with around 100,000 scans, Semiconductor have re-constructed the photographic image to produce an animation which re-introduces time back into the data, revealing the rhythms and artefacts of the capturing process. It gradually zooms out from one scan, whilst moving through the layers, to reveal all of the data.
A large print version of Through the AEgIS shows all of the data, visible at once, with time removed.
* Antihydrogen Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy (AEgIS)
Produced through Collide, an Arts at CERN International Artist Residency. Special thanks to Dr. Michael Doser, research physicist at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research in Geneva.
2017
15:00
two channel HD moving image / three channel sound
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Parting the Waves takes the visual language and method of quantum simulations, as a framework for exploring how science describes and attempts to harness the quantum realm.
Semiconductor have taken as a starting point simulated ‘surface plots’: realised as three co-ordinate graphs, they present mathematical computations of particle interactions, in a quantum system. The plots appear as varying degrees of undulating waveforms, created by the intensity of particles interactions being affected by distance, over time. An angled hexagonal screen expands upon two moving image projections, becoming a graph-like object in the space, mimicking the system employed by scientists to present the simulations.
Sound drives the CGI work, generating and animating visual waveforms. Starting with Hertz: the standard unit for measuring frequency in cycles per second, specific tones have been selected which create harmonies and dissonances, to play with notions of phasing, shifting and interactions in a quantum system. As the tones shift, disturbing the system, so it responds visually, producing varying degrees of amplitude, wavelength and frequency which result in complex interference patterns. The colours are representative of the coding system scientists use, to identify specific parameters or patterns when model making.
Visual and audible noise is used to introduce the concept of coherence and de-coherence in a quantum system: the point at which a systems behaviour changes from that which can be explained by quantum mechanics to classical mechanics. Other details hint at mathematical tools and terms associated with the phenomena of quantum systems such as; superposition, entanglement and wave functions.
Quantum simulations are approximations of nature that are modelled and then compared to other models, to gradually build up a picture of the phenomena being studied. The layers of modelling are a language by which scientists can communicate their findings and get closer to nature. Semiconductor are interested in the extent to which these tools and scientific products bear the signature of a human hand. By making a work where you experience nature through the language that is made to study it, they want to question how our experiences of nature are mediated through science.
Parting the Waves was created through a FEAT (Future Emerging Art and Technology) Residency. FEAT is an initiative of eutema GmbH (AT), Stichting Waag Society (NL), and youris.com (BE). It has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 686527 (H2020-FETOPEN-2015-CSA).
Special thanks to:
Sabrina Maniscalco, University of Turku
Anton Buyskikh, University of Strathclyde, Scotland
Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University, UK
Computational Nonlinear and Quantum Optics Group, Strathclyde University, Scotland
Turku Centre for Quantum Physics, University of Turku, Finland
Parting the Waves, solo Exhibition at Le Lieu Unique, Nantes, 2018. Photo: (c) Martin Argyroglo.
Semiconductor will be exhibiting two works at the 21st Biennale of Sydney in March 2018.
The View from Nowhere, Le Lieu Unique, Nantes, France. Solo Show.
Touch Me Festival: The Invisible Around Us, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka, Croatia. Group Show exhibiting Parting the Waves.
Where Shapes Come From is screening at the 34th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival on Thursday 16th November at 2:00pm – the festival runs from 14th – 19th November 2017
Where Shapes Come From will be screened at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, in the Czech Republic, 24th – 29th October 2017.
Magnetic Movie will screen at The 36th Uppsala International Short Film Festival as part of their curated program Science Friction 23th – 29th October 2017
Where Shapes Come From is screening at the 20th annual Antimatter [Media Art], October 13 to 28, 2017 in Victoria, BC, Canada
Where Shapes Come From will be screened at the 10th Annual Imagine Science Film Festival October 13th – 20th 2017
This October Semiconductor will be exhibiting Parting the Waves at the Touch Me Art and Science Festival, Zagreb, Croatia and presenting their work in person.
Semiconductor will be exhibiting with Future Emerging Art and Technology at BOZAR, Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels this September
Semiconductor will be speaking alongside scientist Antonella de Santo and philospher Dr Beatrice Fazi as part of ‘Visions of the Large Hadron Collider’ a British Science Festival event hosted by Fabrica Gallery, Brighton on 5th September 2017
Semiconductor will be exhibiting Earthworks at Berlin’s Atonal Festival which takes place between 16th and 20th August 2017
Semiconductor will be giving a talk on their work at the National Theatre, London.
Semiconductor will be featured in Imagine Science Labocine’s July Issue
Semiconductor have a forthcoming solo show at Axiom in Tokyo, Japan, 1st July – 26th August 2017.
Semiconductor are exhibiting in the group show Infosphere at Centro National de las Artes (CENART) in Mexico City, 26th May – 3rd September 2017. Exhibiting Magnetic Movie and 20Hz.
Semiconductor have been invited by Arts@CERN to give a presentation at the 1st International Forum on Digital Culture, which is part of Mapping Festival 2017, Geneva, 24th – 25th May 2017.
Prima Materia, Looiersgracht 60, Amsterdam. Group show exhibiting Where Shapes Come From.
Semiconductor will be going to Fiber Festival 2017, Amsterdam, where they will be giving a presentation and screening their work. The festival runs from 11th-14th May 2017.
Where Shapes Come From will be screened at The 24th Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film from 2nd to 7th May 2017.
No Such Thing As Gravity, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Group show exhibiting Worlds in the Making and Magnetic Movie.
Semiconductor will be taking part in a forthcoming group show Future Emerging Art and Technology at LifeSpace, Science Art Research Gallery, Dundee, 13th April- 17th June 2017.
Semiconductor will be exhibiting Black Rain as part of the group show The Universe and Art at ArtScience Museum, Singapore, 1st April – 30th July 2017.
Videoclub will be screening 200 Nanowebbers as part of their 10th Anniversary event, St. Johns Church, London, 31st March 2017.
This March 20Hz will be screened at Centro de Cultura Digital in Mexico City as part of Digital Naturalism, a cycle of films by international artists.
20Hz will be screened at the Strangelove International Time Based Arts Festival, Folkstone, 9th – 24th March 2017, as part of Animotion, a programme of selected animated short films from 1926 to the present day
Semiconductor will be giving a presentation and screening their work at the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival in Hawick, Scotland. The festival runs from 2nd – 5th March 2017.
Semiconductor’s work will be featured in the forthcoming art and astronomy book Cosmos: Exploring the Universe, Phaidon Press, Autumn 2017.
Rotterdam International Film Festival, premiering single channel Where Shapes Come From. Semiconductor will attend the festival.
Where Shapes Come From, Phoenix, Leicester. Solo show of our two-channel moving image work Where Shapes Come From.
Nonspaces, Akbank Sanat,Istanbul, Turkey. Group show exhibiting Catching the Light and Black Rain.
2016
9:00 / 9:50
two channel HD + single channel HD
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Where Shapes Comes From is a moving image work which considers how science translates nature, on an atomic scale.
Filmed in the mineral sciences laboratory at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, a scientist goes about his daily work in rock and mineral preparatory labs; cutting up large meteorites and preparing mineral samples for scientific study. Accompanying this, mineralogist Jeff Post describes the coming together of atoms to form matter. He details formations of organised structures and patterns as if they are happening in real-time, in front of our eyes, transcending time and space.
Raw seismic data, collected from the land forming Mariana deep sea trench, has been converted directly into sound and controls computer generated animations, which are composited into the labs. They depict interpretations of visual scientific forms associated with atomic structures, and the technologies which capture them. Sitting alongside these animated formations are hand-made assemblages of discarded materials and other curiosities, which now bear human signatures. They unite in bringing a sense of playfulness and personal touch to the ordinarily rigorous framework of science.By combining these scientific processes, languages and products associated with matter formation in the context of the everyday, they become fantastical and strange encouraging us to consider how science translates nature and question our experiences of the physical world.
Filmed at the Mineral Sciences Laboratory, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C. during its 100th year.
Audio made from Mariana Trench seismic data courtesy of the IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) Network.
Dialogue: Jeffrey E. Post, Geologist, Curator in Charge, Mineral Collection, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C., U.S.A.
Scientist: Jonathon Cooper
Supported by Arts Council England.
Co-commissioned by EDP Foundation and Phoenix Leicester.
Experimental Motion, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, U.K. Group show exhibiting 20Hz.
The Scientific Method, The Tetley, Leeds, U.K. Group show exhibiting 20Hz.
Our new two-channel moving image work Where Shapes Come From premieres at the Museum of Art Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisbon, as part of the grand opening. Group Show featuring; Haroon Mirza, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Rioji Ikeda and Nuno da Luz.
Recombinant Festival, San Francisco, U.S.A. Screening 10 channel Brilliant Noise.
Our Machines, University of Brighton. Group show exhibiting Band 9. Curated by Louise Colbourne.
The Weight of Things, Film Programme, The Glasgow School of Art Graduate Degree Show. Screening A – Z of Noise and Inaudible Cities.
2016
5 channel computer generated animation with 4 channel surround sound
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Watch a film where Semiconductor discuss the ideas and processes behind Earthworks here (made by Tom Thistlethwaite/Fabrica Brighton): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkg38zms44Q&t=255s
Watch Semiconductor in Conversation with Laura McDermott, Creative Director of Attenborough Centre of the Creative Arts, on the occasion of Earthworks at Fabrica, solo exhibition, 2020
Earthworks is a five channel computer generated animation, which creates an immersive experience of the phenomena of landscape formation through the scientific and technological devices that are used to study it. Masses of colourful layers are animated by the sound-scapes of earthquake, volcanic, glacial and human activity, recorded as seismic waves, which form spectacular fluctuating marbled waveforms.
Semiconductor have employed the scientific technique of Analogue Modelling, which uses layers of real world multi-coloured particles and application of pressure and motion to simulate tectonic and seismic forces. As the layers become deformed they reproduce the generation and evolution of landscapes in nature over thousands of years, revealing them to be in a constant state of flux.
Semiconductor have acquired seismic data captured as a result of land shifting and forming, from all over the world. There are four distinct sections to the work, each using a different set of seismic data. This includes; glacial, earthquake, volcano and human-made seismic activity captured at La Planta quarry, Spain, to represent the Anthropocene, a new geological era influenced by humans. The data has been translated to audio to form the soundtrack of the work, and simultaneously control the animation of the layers. The data as sound directly sculpts the image, re-animates the landscape, and reflects the symbiotic relationship between landscape formation and seismic vibrations. The seismic audio is rich and full of the intricacies of the dynamics of our planet in motion.
By using seismic data to control the masses of layers Semiconductor are not only playing with the idea that it is these forces that have shaped landscapes, but also that being an event that occurs beyond a human-time frame, landscape formation can only be experienced through scientific technological mediation of nature. It produces information about time, space and phenomena that no human consciousness could possibly have witnessed. It is as if we are watching hundreds of thousands of years played out in front of our eyes, enabling us to bear witness to events which ordinarily occur on geological time-frames.
By adopting the analogue modelling techniques, the work celebrates the revelatory capacities of modern science and technologies to create a kind of technological sublime, whilst simultaneously inviting viewers to consider the philosophical problems posed by such technologically mediated observations of imperceptible phenomena.
Earthworks is commissioned by SónarPLANTA
Produced by Advanced Music
Thanks to:
Fundació Sorigué
Sónar Festival/Advanced Music
Nigel Bax
University of Barcelona:
Dr Albert Casas Ponsati
Raul Lovera Carrasco
Mahjoub Himi Benomar
Dr. Josep Anton Muñoz
Oriol Ferrer
Cai Matthews
Jose Luis de Vicente
Salvador Rey Nagel
Seismic data courtesy of the Iris (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) Consortium
Project Daejon: Cosmos, Daejon Museum of Art, Korea. Exhibiting Black Rain and Magnetic Movie.
Semiconductor have been awarded the SónarPLANTA 2016 commission. The multi-channel moving image work will premiere at Sónar Festival, Barcelona, June 2016. Previous commissions include Unidisplay by Carsten Nicolai and RGB|CMY Kinetic by Art+Com.
The Universe and Art, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan. Group show exhibiting Black Rain and multi-channel Brilliant Noise.
Cinnamon Colomboscope 2016, Testing Grounds – Art and Digital Cultures in South Asia and Europe, Former General Post Office, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Group Show exhibiting Catching the Light.
Seeing Round Corners, Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK. Group show exhibiting 20Hz.
JIKJI, the Golden Seed, Grand Exhibition Gallery at Cheongju Arts Centre, South Korea. Group show exhibiting 20Hz + Magnetic Movie.
The Thinking Machine, Ramon Llull and the Ars combinatorial, CCCB, Barcelona, Spain. Exhibiting Black Rain.
Catching the Light, Sidney Cooper Gallery, Canterbury, UK . Exhibiting Band 9.
Hamburg International Short Film Festival, Germany. Screening 20Hz.
Sound Art. Sound as a Medium of Art. ZKM book, distributed by MIT. Edited by Peter Weibel. Featuring Brilliant Noise and Black Rain.
Semiconductor have been awarded a FEAT (Future Emerging Art and Technology) residency, a collaboration between eutema (Vienna), Waag Society (Amsterdam) and Youris (Brussels), working with artist/curator Anna Dumitriu. Over the next nine months they will carry out in depth research with a FET (Future Emerging Technology) science laboratory and produce new work as a result.
Extra Fantôme at La Gaîté Lyrique, Paris. Group show exhibiting Magnetic Movie.
Semiconductor talk on their work at CAST, Helston, Cornwall.
Eco Expanded City, Media Art Biennale, Wroclaw, Poland. Group show exhibiting 20Hz.
Imagine Science Film Festival, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Group show and Semiconductor presentation.
Our Machines, The Observer Building, Hastings, UK. Group show exhibiting Band 9. Curated by Louise Colbourne.
Quantum Entanglement, Arsenal, Nizniy Novgorod, Russia. Group show exhibiting 20Hz stereoscopic installation.
Photo story of our Collide@CERN residency.
No1 Shanti Road, Bangalore, India. Group screening presenting All the Time in the World.
West Wednesdays, LIMA, Amsterdam. Screening Black Rain as part of an art trail.
Today’s Art, Kawasaki, Japan. Group screening presenting 20Hz, Brilliant Noise and Heliocentric.
We have been awarded the Collide@CERN Ars Electronica Award. In the coming months we will begin a two month residency at CERN, the world’s largest particle physics research facility in Geneva Switzerland, followed by a month at Ars Electronica Futurelab.
DATA DRIFT, Kim Contemporary Art Centre, Latvia. Group Show exhibiting Band 9.
Pastoral Noir: New English Landscapes, Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Congratulations to Lilly Husbands on winning the prestigious 2014 Norman McLaren/Evelyn Lambert Award-Best Scholarly Article in Animation for ‘The meta-physics of data: Philosophical science in Semiconductor’s animated videos’
2015
installation of 9 light boxes / various sizes
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Images Courtesy Pump House Gallery/Photo Eoin Carey
Band 9 is an installation that considers nature within the framework of science. Nine light boxes show scientific cloud data, which have been captured from space by a remote sensing satellite, orbiting the Earth. Using optical sensors it collects reflected light in various wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. By focusing on very thin slices of these, scientists can pinpoint individual phenomena such as the band we see here, which is designed to reveal high-altitude clouds called Cirrus.
In this instance, scientists are not interested in the clouds themselves, but in removing their shadows and wispy texture from their data: whose presence obscures the real information they are trying to collect. Semiconductor have embraced these redundant images for their power to offer new ways of seeing a familiar place. Re-contextualised in this way and bearing the signatures of science, the images have become a kind of technological sublime.
What we see in the images is dictated by the capturing technology; the satellite scans in 115 mile wide swathes orbiting the earth from north to south and anything beyond the dedicated wavelengths is swallowed into a black void. The angle the light boxes are installed reflects the incline the data has been captured and archived at. By presenting the raw satellite data using techniques informed by the capturing technology Semiconductor are, exploring how technologies that are made to study nature, mediate our experiences and understanding of it.
Band 9 is commissioned by Pump House Gallery, London.
Data available from the U.S. Geological Survey.
Infosphere, ZKM, Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany. Group show exhibiting Magnetic Movie and 20Hz.
Animated Wonderworlds, Museum of Design, Zurich. Group show exhibiting Magnetic Movie.
Gwangju Media Art Festival, South Korea. Exhibiting Magnetic Movie.
Superconduction, Dome Square, Riga, Latvia. Group Show exhibiting 20Hz (stereoscopic installation)
Open City Documentary Film Festival, A programme of short experimental and animated work that bridge the gap of documentary and observation. Screening Magnetic Movie + panel discussion.
Ars Electronica, Screening curated by Animate Projects presenting a selection of some of the most innovative animated short films from the Ars Electronica festival in Linz. Semiconductor will be part of the panel discussion.
Beyond the Single Screen, Tate Britain, London. Artists Lynn Loo and Guy Sherwin will premiere a new collaboration while Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt) screen/stage work in situ as part of a celebration to mark the publication launch of Catherine Elwes’ Installation and the Moving Image (Wallflower Press).
International Conference of Historical Geographers 2015. Semiconductor will present their work Cosmos.
20Hz has been awarded the Quantum Shorts prize.
Semiwild Garden, Kouvola Art Museum, Finland. Group show exhibiting Heliocentric.
Singapore Open Media Art Festival. Exhibiting Black Rain.
Post on Semiconductors Catching the Light, by Alexander Scholz, Creative Applications Network.
Multiplace Festival, Bratislava, Czech. Screening 20Hz, Puffed Rice and A-Z of Noise.
Suburban PS, Rotterdam, Netherlands. Showing Heliocentric.
Semiconductor are on the Prix Ars Electronica 2015 Jury for Computer Animation / Film / VFX
3 Branches of the Same Tree, Pump House Gallery, London. Group show with newly commissioned work.
Parallel Screen, on-line screening space of Suburban PS, Rotterdam, Netherlands. Showing Some Part of Us.
Quantum of Disorder, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich. Group show exhibiting Magnetic Movie.
Shortlisted for the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail
Now on-line, Moving Image Review & Art Journal, Volume 2 Number 2, Intellect Journals. Semiconductor article. Read the article: The meta-physics of data: Philosophical science in Semiconductor’s animated videos by Lilly Husbands.
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