Disturbances
Issue 54 November 2019
Interlocking Systems of Making
“My work is an exploration between vision and sound and the power of this connection to generate compelling visual environments. The inquiry of this integration has also satisfied a strong interest in the ideas and methodology of science as a basis for the conceptual underpinning of the work. As such, the method of creating my work is scientifically inspired with a well thought out and tested process oriented to have optimal pragmatic results both for the quality of the work itself and the benefits of the process for me as the maker.”
Daniel Hill is a painter, sound artist, curator, educator, and writer whose work explores the relationship between visual art, sound, and science. His paintings employ a rules based system in which the notion of embodied cognition is an inquiry as well as the balance between the aesthetic and conceptual.
Ten Thousand Thoughts
Esther Rolinson is a British visual artist who explores the use of new media technology as well as long-established artistic languages such as drawing and sculpture. Her interest in bringing consciousness to our sensations led her to work with light. Due to its immediacy and potential to affect our senses, light became an important feature of her artistic production, one among a wide range of materials that she uses. Another key element is computer programming. In her work the use of new media is as essential as pencil and paper.
Mindfully Dizzy
Harold Offeh is an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh, often employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture and is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of history.
To Not Follow Under
Leah Clements’s practice is concerned with the relationship between the psychological, emotional, and physical, often through personal accounts of unusual or hard-to-articulate experiences. Her work also focuses on sickness / cripness / disability in art, in critical and practical ways.
In March 2019, Leah launched ‘Access Docs for Artists’: an online resource made in collaboration with Lizzy Rose and Alice Hattrick to help disabled artists create and use access documents.
Exploring Complex Systems in Nature
“My work is an exploration of complex systems in nature, and the dynamic interplay of structure and contingency that makes up the universe. I begin with spirals as a basic unit of configuration. Using compressed air to create and move small currents of paint, I yield control to my materials so that these basic units become force fields, drawing energy within themselves like a vortex and radiating it outward. As they bump up against one another, and overlap, they create interference patterns and complex interstitial spaces. These vibrate in a dynamic interplay in which nothing is static, where “positive and “negative” spaces shift in relation to one another in the shifting light.”
Consider Falling
Sarah Howe is a UK based artist whose installations situate still and moving image within sculptural space. Her work stands in the crossing between a material and psychological landscape, in a reach to illustrate heightened inner states.
Her installation ‘Consider Falling’ is rooted in research into derealisation (the condition of feeling that reality is unreal) and depersonalisation (a feeling of detachment from oneself, or that oneself is unreal) collectively referred to as DPD.
We’ve discovered the world’s largest drum – and it’s in space
Dr Martin Archer is a Space Physicist at Queen Mary University of London (and Imperial College London). Martin became a published scientist whilst still an undergraduate, working on the Cluster space mission. It is this work which has inspired his PhD research on structures and waves in the Earth’s magnetosphere.
We may just have solved the great mystery of why drops splash
“I am interested in the flow of liquids and gases at very small scales (so-called microfluidics) where experimental analysis is often impossible. Using mathematical modelling and computational simulation can then provides unique insight into such flows.
Much of my research has concerned the dynamics of liquid drops – how they merge, form and interact with solid surfaces (do they splash?).”
James Sprittles is Assistant Professor in Mathematics, University of Warwick.
How we identified brain patterns of consciousness
Davinia Fernández-Espejo is Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology and Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham. Her main goal is to understand how the brain supports consciousness and what goes wrong for patients to become entirely unaware after severe brain injury. She uses techniques such as MRI (structural and functional), tDCS, and behavioural approaches in both healthy volunteers and patients with a disorder of consciousness to test hypotheses about the role of different brain structures in the clinical deficits they present. This research is directly translated into the development of diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers to be used in clinical settings, as well as the development of novel treatment approaches.
Our obsession with taking photos is changing how we remember the past
“Human memory represents my main research interest, and more specifically I study how personal memories are remembered in normal people and in those whose ability to remember is exceptional. I believe in disseminating the results of research to the larger public. My work on memory has been featured in newspapers and magazines in the UK (among many, The Sunday Times) and around the world (among many,The Washington Post). I enjoy collaborations with artists (see the False Memory Archive; The Not Knowns theatre project, both funded by the Wellcome Trust).”
Giuliana Mazzoni is Professor of Psychology, University of Hull.