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.
Acquired for Audemars Piguet Collection, CERN collection and 2 private collections.
HALO 0.1 / 0.2 / 0.3, Broken Symmetries, Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia, 2021. Photo: Stanislav Stepaško / Kumu Art Museum
HALO 0.1 / 0.2 / 0.3, National Center of Contemporary Arts, (CNAC), Santiago, Chile, 2019. Photo: CNAC
HALO 0.3, 2018
HALO 0.2, 2018
HALO 0.3, 2018
HALO 0.1 / 0.2 / 0.3, National Center of Contemporary Arts, (CNAC), Santiago, Chile, 2019. Photo: CNAC
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.
Where Shapes Come From, Sydney Biennale, AGNSW, 2018. Photo: Document Photography
Where Shapes Come From (still), 2016
Where Shapes Come From, Fiber Festival, Amsterdam, 2017. Photo: Fiber Festival
Where Shapes Come From, Le Lieu Unique, Nantes, solo show, 2018. Photo: Martin Argyroglo
Where Shapes Come From (still), 2016
Where Shapes Come From, Sydney Biennale, AGNSW, 2018. Photo: Document Photography
Where Shapes Come From (still), 2016
Where Shapes Come From (still), 2016
Where Shapes Come From, Shenzen New Media Arts Festival, China, 2019
Where Shapes Come From, Le Lieu Unique, Nantes, solo show, 2018. Photo: Martin Argyroglo
Where Shapes Come From, Shenzen New Media Arts Festival, China, 2019
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
2014
sculpture
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Cosmos is a two metre spherical wooden sculpture that has been formed from scientific data made tangible. Interested in the divide between how science represents the physical world and how we experience it, Semiconductor have taken scientific data as being a representation of nature and are exploring how we can physically relate to it.
Located in the Forestry Commissions Alice Holt Forest, U.K., the sculpture is made from one year’s worth of measurements of the take up and loss of carbon dioxide from the forest trees, collected from the top of a 28m high flux tower located nearby in Alice Holt Research Forest.
To reveal the visual patterns and shapes inherent in the data Semiconductor developed custom digital techniques to translate the data from strings of numbers into three-dimensional forms. The result is complex interference patterns produced by the waveforms and patterns in the data.
Through this process of re-contextualising the data it has becomes abstract in form and meaning, taking on sculptural properties. These sculptural forms become unreadable within the context of science, yet become a physical form we can see, touch, experience and readable in a new way. Here, humanising the data offers a new perspective of the natural world it is documenting.
The definition of cosmos is a complete, orderly, harmonious system and here refers to the sources of the combined data which work in harmony to make the forest what it is.
Semiconductor would like to thank: Matt Wilkinson, Forest Research, Forestry Commission England for the data.
Julian Williams, Alice Holt Forest
Richard Barrass, Civil Engineer
Matt Risdale and Karn Sandilands, Millimetre, fabricators of Cosmos
Penny Harris, Parker Harris, Project managers
Hayley Skipper, Forestry Commission England
WUP Doodle, CNC machining
2011
05.00 minutes
HD + HD 3D single channel
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
20 Hz is a moving image work by Semiconductor created using data of the Earth’s magnetic field as a geo-magnetic storm occurs in the Earth’s upper atmosphere; we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz.
The data used was obtained from CARISMA (Canadian Array for Real-time Investigations of Magnetic Activity), a vast magnetometer network, which covers a large region of North America, from the Canadian Arctic down to Michigan. The devices collect the data from the Earth’s magnetosphere, where interactions occur between particles, magnetic fields and the solar wind.Some of the sounds recorded can be attributed to specific interactions occurring in the Earth’s upper atmosphere; the tweeting noises are a form of magnetic pulsation generated by various instabilities, the deep rumbles are from the high-speed solar wind flowing over the Earth’s magnetic field boundary and causing ripples to form.
To create 20 Hz Semiconductor developed custom programming and 3-D manipulation techniques to simultaneously realise audio and sculptural forms that are born directly from, and animated by, the data. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex interference patterns emerge, revealing the data as three-dimensional and tangible, like some kind of natural phenomena is playing out before our eyes.
With this work Semiconductor have chosen to reference imagery often employed in scientific visualisations – such as a black & white palette, a shallow depth of field – framing the data by the very tools of knowledge acquisition, drawing attention to a process of observation of natural phenomena itself. With this framing they seek to question how the anthropocentric view of events beyond human reach conditions our everyday experience of the natural world, highlighting the subjective nature of science.
Through this work Semiconductor continue to explore their interest in that which is outside of what is humanly perceivable, confronting the viewer with information which is ordinarily outside of a human scale, both of time and space. Detached from its scientific framework, data becomes a material in its own form, creating a space for reflection upon our relationship to phenomena at the extremities of our perception and positioning the human subject as part of the wider ecosystem of our universe.
Audio Data courtesy of CARISMA, operated by the University of Alberta, funded by the Canadian Space Agency. Special thanks to Andy Kale.
Awarded the ‘Golden Gate Award for New Visions’ at San Francisco International Film Festival, 2012.
Awarded the ‘Art and Science Award’ at Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2012. Awarded first prize at Quantum Shorts 2014, Centre for Quantum Technologies, University of Singapore.
Worlds in the Making, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool, UK, 2011. Photo: Brian Slater
2011
23.00 minutes
3 channel HD
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Worlds in the Making is an epic three channel moving image work that explores how we observe, experience and create an understanding of the physical origins of the world around us. By appropriating the tools and processes of volcanology to re-interpret the primordial landscapes of our volcanic planet, Semiconductor create a world slightly removed from the one we think we know, disrupting our every day assumptions of reality and questioning how science affects our experience of the natural world.
In the work the use of audio investigates our relationship with the physical, scientific and ephemeral nature of sound. Seismic data collected from beneath volcanoes and translated into audio evokes images of rocks crunching and grinding below the Earth and is used as a sculptural tool to generate elaborate CG animations of matter forming as mineral crystals. A scientist’s dialogue appears to guide us through extraordinary landscapes while Oren Ambarchi’s composition overwhelms as it brings an emotional connection to place.
The viewer is transported through dystopian landscapes, strangely exquisite animations, fantastical vistas, and natural phenomena to a world between science fiction and science fact.
Commissioned by Jacqui Davies and FACT, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology.Supported by Arts Council England. Gulbenkian Galapagos Artists Fellowship. Smithsonian Artists Research Fellowship.
Credits:
Music by Oren Ambarchi – Published by Touch Music (MCPS) Richard S. Fiske – Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Mineral Sciences Department: for his oratory skills, field notes and methodical tephra sorting. Ellen Thurneau – Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Mineral Sciences Department. William G. Melson – Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Mineral Sciences Department: for his audio recordings of Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica erupting. Jonathan M. Lees, Professor of Geological Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. For his seismic data collected at Tungurahua volcano, Ecuador which features in the work.. Gregory P. Waite, Assistant Professor of Geophysics, Michigan Technological University, USA. For his seismic data from Fuego Volcano, Guatemala and Mount St. Helens, Washington, USA. Jorge Ordonez at Instituto Geofisico, Quito Ecuador Adam and Miriam at Instituto Geofisico, Quito Ecuador
Global Volcanism Program, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Dennis Geist, Professor of Geology at the University of Idaho, USA Gorki Ruiz at Instituto Geofisico, Quito Ecuador Instituto Geofisico Volcano Observatory, Tungurahua, Ecuador
Scientific paper: Liquid Sulfur at Volcan Azufre, Galapagos Islands by W.E. Colony and Bert E. Nordle, 1973. Charles Darwin Research Station Library, Santa Cruz, Galapagos, Ecuador.
Produced by Jacqui Davies.
preview of Worlds in the Making installation – to watch HD full screen double-click the image
Worlds in the Making, Crystallize, Old Billingsgate, London, 2013
Worlds in the Making, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), solo show, 2011. Photo: Brian Slater
Worlds in the Making (still), 2011
Worlds in the Making, Semiconductor: The Technological Sublime, City Gallery Wellington, solo show, 2019. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Worlds in the Making (still), 2011
Worlds in the Making, Semiconductor: The Technological Sublime, City Gallery, Wellington, solo show, 2019. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Worlds in the Making (still), 2011
Worlds in the Making (still), 2011
Worlds in the Making, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), solo show, 2011. Photo: Brian Slater
2007
04:47 minutes
HD single channel
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing geometries . All action takes place around NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratories, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries. Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers’ produced by fleeting electrons . Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?
An Animate Projects commission for Channel 4 in association with Arts Council England. Shot at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, California, USA.
Many thanks to the following people:
Bill Abbett, David Brain, Bob Lin, Janet Luhmann, Stephen Mende, Forrest Mozer, Ilan Roth and Paul Thompson.
Also big thanks to the CSE team at the Silver Space Sciences Lab. UC Berkeley, USA.
VLF Recordings: Stephen P.McGreevy
Awarded the Nature ‘Scientific Merit Award’ by Imagine Science Film Festival, New York, 2009.
Purchased by the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington for the permanent collection, 2008.
Awarded ‘Best Film at Cutting Edge’ at the British Animation Awards, 2008.
Special Mention, ‘Best International Experimental Short’ at Leeds International Film Festival, 2008. Awarded ‘Best Experimental Film’ at Tirana International Film Festival, 2007.
2006
02:40
HD single channel / surround sound
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Acousticity is a site specific animation commissioned by Prague Contemporary Art Festival, June 2006 as part of the show In a Silent Way: Susan Philipsz, Mark Bain, Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, Semiconductor, Martin Janicek, Yuji Oshima and Paolo Piscitelli. Curated By Daniele Balit.
During many excursions around the Czech capital, Semiconductor photographed and recorded the sights and sounds of the city; reaching from the suburbs and its factories to the city’s famous medieval centre. Each section of the film is controlled and animated by the sound that was recorded in situ at time of the photography, creating a physical connection between the images and the audio. The animated photos bring to life the fabric of the city using resonance to open a window onto the physicality of the structures themselves. The buildings appear to be exploding with energetic particles leaving it unclear whether we are looking at time speeded up, or an unseen moment in time.
2006
05:02 minutes
HD single channel + 3 channel
A Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.
Earth Moves is an exploration into how unseen forces affect the fabric of our world. By collecting field recordings and using them to directly animate photographs of the landscapes from which they came, the limits of human perception are exposed, revealing a world which is unstable and in a constant state of animation. As the forces of acoustic waves come into play on our surroundings, we bear witness to vast undulating terrains, which challenge our everyday experiences of the world around us.
The South-East of England is explored through a series of five audio controlled photographic panoramas.
Earth Moves is an Arts Council England commission and is permanently installed at the South East offices, Brighton. Earth Moves was developed from an idea initiated during participation in Greg Daville’s City Running, Brighton March 2006. Three screen version of Earthmoves commissioned by Lovebytes.
