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.

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.

In 2016 we were invited to be artists-in residence with QuProcs (Quantum Probes for Quantum Systems) a joint research project between a number of international labs. 

We made research trips to three of these: the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University, the Computational and Quantum Optics Group at Strathclyde University in Scotland and the Quantum Lab at University of Turku in Helsinki.

Supported by Professor Sabrina Maniscalco we arranged meetings with the teams at each of the labs, and undertook our own research to get to grips with the whys and hows of what the scientists were doing.

It is always quite overwhelming and exhausting jumping in the deep end in this way, spending an intensive period taking on lots of new information that you don’t fully comprehend, but we have found it is actually key to how we work. Engaging directly with the scientists rather than learning from the written page enables you to get the bigger picture, experience how the science functions in the lab and gives opportunities to delve into specific areas of interest and build up relationships with the scientists. All of this becomes integral to our process of making an artwork when engaging with scientific settings. 

One of the key experiments carried out by QuProcs at Strathclyde University involves attempting to look at individual atoms trapped with light to understand better the problems of solid state physics. By using lasers the scientists trap atoms in an ‘optical lattice’ just like the crystal in a semiconductor, the lattice mimics atoms in real world materials. This process allows the quantum behaviour of atoms to be studied. Atom sources, which are metal in atomic form, are heated up to a vapour, and then cooled and pushed, as a beam, through stages of cooling, to get to very low temperatures. The low temperatures enable the scientists to see the atoms isolated to observe their quantum behaviour. 

The scientists described the experiment as starting with a system which is settled, and then disturbing it, shaking it, removing one particle in the middle, then taking images in time intervals which reveal something about the quantum behaviour of particles.

We were interested to hear the researchers speaking about different kinds of ‘image capturing’. They described two types of image: Fluorescing the image, which consists of collecting the photons emitted by the atoms, and the data is the matrix with intensity. The other technique, absorption imaging, is the inverse, where you image the absence of light. You take two pictures, one with the atoms and one where you shine light onto the atoms. You collect what comes through and in effect you get a picture of atom shadows. 

One of the key bits of learning from these conversations and our time in the QuProcs labs was the principle that complexity arises from the build-up of particles when studying their individual interactions on a microscopic scale. That new unpredictable phenomena emerge (Sabrina Maniscalc, Oxford). 

As Andrew Daley told us ‘a lot of the most exciting discoveries with physics have not been discoveries from suddenly seeing that something is fundamentally different about the microscopic, they were things about how particles behave when there’s many of them –  their collective behaviour – a behaviour that you couldn’t predict even if you knew very well how things behave microscopically.’

The first person to describe this on a philosophical level was physicist Philip Anderson, in his editorial in Popular Mechanics, More Is Different: Broken symmetry and the nature of the hierarchical structure of science, (4 Aug 1972, Vol 177, Issue 4047 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.177.4047.393)

Andrew goes on to explain ..when we start investigating what was happening in particular condensed matter, the physics of electrons and solids, we started to discover that even if you could write down a microscopic model for how nature in principle worked , it did not mean that you would immediately understand all the properties that came out of that. 

As soon as you started to do physics on a scale where you had more particles involved, it was not enough to know these microscopic models, it was almost like a new science completely unto itself to understand what was happening. 

In the past we have spent time in science laboratories with very large fields of interest. For this project it was great to gain insight into a more specific area of research. It enabled us to carry out in-depth research in the area and get a thorough understanding of the science being carried out, with a clear overview of the experiments, simulations and theories being explored. 

When starting our residency some of the scientists were initially unsure about what we might want from them, this was partly due to none of the labs having previously had artists visiting. At one lab a scientist opened up to us at a dinner saying he hadn’t been interested in meeting the visiting artists, but that after we had spent some time with him talking about his work he found it really enjoyable and beneficial to him, helping him to consider his work in a new way. 

Following two days spent at the Turku lab in Finland discussing with the theorists in groups, what they do and the fundamentals of their work, Sabrina said that several scientists had told her they really enjoyed talking to us in this way as they don’t get to talk to each other like that normally; for them it opened up new ways of engaging with each other. Receiving this feedback from scientists during our residencies helps us reflect upon our role as artists and to get a better understanding of what we can bring to science settings as well as what we can take away to help us develop new work and concepts.

After the initial research trips and the independent research we carried out we narrowed our focus upon the mathematical simulations produced at the Strathclyde lab by Anton Buyskikh. Anton was kind enough to send us files, images and data to further our research and experiments. We then set to work developing a computer generated animation with mathematical quantum system simulations as a starting point, considering what they represent and how the language of science represents it.

The residency resulted in the creation of a new moving image work Parting the Waves, you can read more about this here.

In 2013 we were awarded a commission by Jerwood Open Forest, a partnership between Jerwood Charitable foundation and Forestry Commission England. For the commission we were invited to create a site-specific public sculpture which would be situated in the Alice Holt Forest in Hampshire a woods of oak and conifer trees, which supplied timber for the building of ships for the Royal Navy in the 18th and 19th centuries. 

We began by finding out what science research projects were taking place in the forests of England that we could develop some ideas around for a new work. This initial research, and discussions with the forestry commission team, lead us to learn about an Experimental Forest nearby where scientists have a 28m tall tower that takes measurements from the forest canopy. We learnt that a scientist based near there at Forest Research, Matt Wilkinson, was using some of the scientific instruments we came across in our initial proposal, so we were excited when we found out that he was up for meeting with us. 

The tower is located in the ‘Straits Enclosure’ and takes 4 measurements: wind, temperature, H2O, carbon take up and loss by trees. There are also two cameras which collect images of the canopy from above and below. 

At the top of the tower, there is a great sense of serenity, and an incredible view over the expanse of trees; we noticed how different the sounds were up there. During this trip we learnt a lot about the various instruments and how the data is collected and stored. The scientists plot diurnal and annual cycles, noting when the forest is a source of CO2 and when it acts as a sink for CO2. Matt told us that the trees sink more carbon dioxide in the day and become a strong source of CO2 in the night, with the trees taking up more carbon dioxide in the summer, and being a strong source of CO2 in the winter.

After our visit to the woods we had some discussions with fabricators (Millimetre) about what materials we could use to create the sculpture. Meanwhile we carried out some research around the visualisation techniques scientists in this field use to plot their data. Matt Wilkinson pointed us to some work his extended network produced, and one of the graphs for carbon dioxide plotting caught our attention. It uses a polar plot to represent several years’ worth of data overlaid. This type of data naturally comes encoded with markers of time; we are always exploring different ways to represent time beyond the linear so we liked the way that time was represented as a cyclical form, mirroring the shape of a tree trunk and tree rings within the waveforms. This particular diagram sparked something for us.

We settle on an approach to use the year’s worth of data from the forest, mapped in a circle. We then started thinking about the data sets (the measurements of the CO2 exchange between the forest and the environment, wind velocity, temperature and moisture) as a sculptural medium and how we can ‘sculpt’ the data. We start with a circular strip of pure data, as a waveform; a beautiful 3-d object directly taken from the data. We then use this to make a range of test models for lathing the forms, extruding them;  We root our thinking in what would work in the real world, in a forest, wanting to find a form which doesn’t seem too familiar or comfortable.

We start to translate the data, not just as waveforms but as 3-D objects. Out of these experiments came a ‘big dark globe’ that’s burnt all over: using charred wood, which has been shaped using a layering of the data sets. This approach creates something visceral from the data; something tangible rather than just a graphical representation of it. We re-visited Matt Wilkinson, looking over our ideas with him.  He was able to share with us a years’ worth of data for each of the four instruments, which we would then layer to create the interference patterns across the surface of the final sculpture.

We also were able to access a year’s worth of image data from the hemispherical cameras imaging the canopy and forest floor. This imagery we found totally absorbing, showing the slow process of the changing seasons beautifully. This imagery was also revealing of the anomalies of the capturing process, which give the material a raw quality making you aware of the mechanics of the data collecting. This material later became part of an exhibition at Jerwood Projects space. 

We also did some tests exploring making drawings using the data collected from flux tower, by carbonising paper and scratching into this with a computer plotter. 

We spent some time looking into what wood we could use for constructing the outdoor sculpture, from fallen trees from the research forest to off-the-shelf wooden planks, gaining an understanding of what properties the wood would need being exposed to the elements. Weighing-up budget, durability and the timeframe of the project we decided on using wood from a local timber suppliers.

We worked closely with the fabricators, supplying the datasets as 3D instructions for a 3d CNC cutter. This result was a surface carved of complex interference patterns produced by the waveforms and patterns in the data. We also worked with programmer Julian Weaver to develop custom digital techniques to translate the data from strings of numbers into three-dimensional forms. To find the right surface finish for the work millimetre carried out charring wood tests. The final structure being formed from a series of interlocking pentagons and hexagons, with undulations carved upon the surfaces which reveal the patterns inherent in the data. 

While the work was in production we worked closely with the team at the Forestry Commission to find a location for the sculpture to be sited. We looked at a number of sites with an understanding of the technical requirements of the installation of the work. We spent some time thinking about this, wanting the exact site to be somewhere people would happen across unexpectedly, and not that close to the entrance so if you came intentionally to find the work it would be an adventure to discover its location. 

Once the work was installed it had this incredible sense of belonging; like it was born of the forest, which it was in many ways, shaped by the data which represents the elements vital to the growth of trees and the sustaining of the forest. We chose to call the work Cosmos, defined as a complete, orderly, harmonious system; with reference to the sources of the combined data which are so delicately balanced in order for the forest to exist, an incredible interdependent ecosystem.

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