SRG Bennett

This experiment in land/environmental art exists in nine separate locations around Cortijo los Gazquez, the site of Joya: Art + Ecologia in Andalusia. I researched land and environmental art prior to my residency at Joya, in particular how artists have ‘framed’ the landscape without traditional pictorial devices such as the camera or canvas. At one end of the scale, Walter De Maria carved four 1.6km long trenches through the Nevadan desert (see the first entry in this blog). Las Vegas Piece emphasises the land’s organic contours and water residues by framing them within a human-made, rectilinear structure. By creating a piece which can only be fully comprehended by a ‘helicopter-view’ shot, his work explores the relationship between the map and the terrain. At the other end of the scale, Jan Dibbets produced a less grandiose framing of the landscape, marking a perspective-warped quadrant using chalk in the grass Perspectives Correction).

After hiking to the top of one of the peaks of the nearby Sierra Largo, I was fascinated by the contours and shapes of the limestone paving covering the peak. This ostensibly barren scene (see first photo) upon closer inspection accommodated delicate wildflowers. I used stones I found on the peak to make a sampling quadrat, inspired by the biology quadrat sampling technique, and photographed the life inside the space. Thus, a context-specific, natural and temporary outside artwork was created.

Returning to the Cortijo los Gazquez, I constructed another square, this time onto my map, taking as a starting point the location where I had constructed my first quadrat (see pictures). I have been fascinated with the way artists like Richard Long have drawn circles or shapes onto maps, and then materially realised these abstract shapes by walking the very path they have drawn. I attempted to pay homage to these ideas by constructing nine quadrats at nine equal points around the map square.

Over the next ten days or so, I walked to the eight other points of the square (see the line drawing of my walks to the points of the square). At each point, I would create a quadrat out of whatever materials I could find in location. Some of the quadrats were easy to make, on flat ground with easy building materials to hand. Some of them were more challenging – on the slopes of hills, with bushy plants on the ground, surrounded by thirsty wasps and blood-thirsty mosquitos.

A 3x3 collage shows all nine quadrat samples. At nine locations around the Andalusian hills there is a very discrete and location-specific artwork, consisting of a simple 1 meter x 1 meter square, made out of stones, sticks or earth. Each artwork will eventually return to natural disorder, but likely at various speeds and due to various causes. Some of the artworks are in conspicuous places like roads or summits, others are buried deep in pine forest, away from paths. People may find the quadrats – stumbling across them, using the map in this blog – and may wonder why they have been created, or they may forever go undiscovered. In these hills there is now a secret geometry which draws harsh, straight lines between nine points, which can only be knowable with the aid of a map, and will eventually crumble over time.

A possible next step for this work is to sit down with a botany expert to start identifying the plants and insects inside each quadrat.

This work was produced during a two-week residency at Atina, Italy, organised by Lumen, a space-arts collective based in Bethnal Green. The final work was displayed in the Chiesa San Francesco as part of Lumen’s exhibition in the Assumption of Mary festival which took place in Atina, 15th and 16th August 2017.

Through the residency I experimented with using the sun to compose artwork, including solar printing with cyanotypes and lumen prints. Atina had not seen rain for over a month, the Mediterranean was experiencing heatwaves and droughts, and I witnessed three forest fires during the residency. There seemed a fateful convergence of subject and material. I set about developing data visualisations of Mediterranean environmental change using the sun’s energy as a variable in the composition of the work.

One work is a map of the Mediterranean in 96 squares or data pixels. I coded each pixel to show rainfall data from www.climatewizard.org. Cyanotype-coated map squares were exposed to the sun for differing amounts of time depending on the expected reduction in rainfall. The more climate change expected, the longer the pixel was exposed to the sun. The result is that some data squares, generally in the north of Europe, are completely underexposed and invisible. Other squares, especially in the Mediterranean, are much deeper blue in colour, literally exposed to the sun’s rays for too long. The deep blue is both the natural colour of cyanotypes and a deliberately dissonant visual device, as it confounds the frequent notification where blue signifies cooler or wetter conditions.

A separate work develops the theme of data visualisation. Again, the sun is used to compose the work, and this time the work provides data about the sun. A small map of climate change in Italy, centred on Atina, was derived from www.climatewizard.org. Twelve separate cyanotypes were exposed, each for 500 seconds, the length of time it takes for the sun’s rays to reach the earth. Each cyanotype is exposed at a different time of day, starting at 7am at the top left, going across each hour to the bottom right image exposed at 6pm. The twelve images provide data on how the sun’s power changes during the day in a specific location in Italy, at the same time as providing data on how Italy’s wider environment will change over the next 60 years.

The work shown in the Chiesa San Francesco was specifically developed to take advantage of the unique topography of the church. I used water risk data from the World Resource’s Institute’s interactive Aqueduct mapping tool to produce 24 glass map tiles of the Mediterranean, arranged on the church’s votive candle stand. I developed a special method to solar expose cyanotype maps on glass. Candles illuminate the glass tiles from below, imbuing the piece with a sense of atmosphere, but also heat and viscosity. Periodically a candle would poignantly snuff out, emitting reams of smoke. Perhaps more optimistically I noticed through the exhibition that individuals were making offerings to pay for new candles to replace those who had expired, to carry on illuminating the map of Europe.

The Young’s Translator, pictured on this page, is a piece of speculative design produced with Amy Starmar as part of the Central Saint Martins collaboration with Royal Society on research culture. The object is an ‘artefact of the future’, exhibited as part of Julie Light’s Museum of Extraordinary Objects.

The aim of the artefact is to provoke questions around open access in a future research system. The pyramid (in reality made from resin and then laser cut) represents a futuristic device which translates information from one discipline to another. Our argument is that true open access is not just about getting hold of data and information, it also requires the information to be intelligible and translated between disciplinary codes.

Here is what the curator’s notes say on the Young’s Translator:

Young’s Translator (2031)
On loan from the private collection of Lady Amy Starmar

This early prototype of the now ubiquitous Young’s Translator ushered in the true advent of Open Access 2.0. Lady Amy Starmar devoted herself to the translation of scientific disciplines after experiencing frustration with the limits of Open Access 1.0. The scientific community had achieved significant progress in uniting ‘Gold’ and ‘Green’ routes

to Open Access, and global online repositories had been united under the universally accessible platform Library.Alexandria. However, open access was still inhibited by disciplinary jargons and codes, prohibiting interdisciplinary collaboration and true engagement from a budding citizen scientist population.

Starmar chose to name the device after Thomas Young, former foreign secretary of the Royal Society, and described as the ‘last man who knew everything’. The prototype housed in the Museum demonstrates the particularly popular ‘Lay Science’ feature of the device. The text explains the Higgs Mechanism, and is the winning entry to former science minister William Waldegrave’s competition to explain the Higgs Boson in plain English. 

The Higgs Boson & Mechanism were chosen partly because it relates to a parallel project on particle physics at CERN, and partly because it is emblematic of extremely complex which people from all walks of life (scientists or otherwise) struggle to understand.

See here for more information on the collaborative project with the Royal Society on research culture. See here for David Miller's brilliant winning entry to Waldegrave's competition to explain the Higg's Mechanism in plain English.

Collection of work produced as part of a collaboration between Central Saint Martins and the Royal Society to visualise the future of research culture in the UK. ‘Research culture’ includes the behaviours, incentives, norms, values and amenities employed and available to actors in the research system. Actors include researchers, funders, public bodies, private philanthropists, university management, technicians, company employees and editors.  The brief from the Royal Society: produce artwork to stimulate a conversation with this group of people about what research culture may look like in 2035.

The problem: naturally we find it difficult to put ourselves in a future world, and instead are more inclined to talk about what bothers about today. These are important conversations, but when a project specifically focuses on the future, it requires imagination to achieve a more future-orientated discussion. Speculative design is a well-tested technique to engineer this kind of discussion. The students on the MA course employed this approach to develop artefacts from a future research system.

Each artefact was specifically designed to provoke a dialogue about particular part of research culture. The work as a whole was curated into a Museum of Extraordinary Objects, set in 2035, by fellow student Julie Light. I collaborated on two objects: the Young’s Translator, with Amy Starmar; and the New Career Map, with Liv Bargman.

The New Career Map addresses the issue of professional and career development in the academic world. Anecdotally we hear that researchers feel they have limited options in terms of career progression. The academic world has a pyramid management system, and the number of senior academic jobs are small compared to the number of researchers at PhD and even post-doctoral level. Yet there is also a sense that leaving academic represents some kind of failure.

The New Career Map provokes a dialogue about what a better future could look like. The map, from the year 2027, visualises skills in terms of overlapping continents, almost like a futuristic Pangaea. Job roles are dotted around the continents like settlements around a map. The map deliberately eschews the more traditional hierarchical job structure; instead jobs are in close proximity if the skills required for them are similar. There are then transparencies which provide additional layers of analysis. The first layer shows a network of pathways between jobs, from the Major Highway, to more scenic routes (the map does note: “other pathways are available!”. The second layer then allows an individual to use the patented career map technology – available in 2027 – to see what a possible career pathway may look like, given the data and information input into the online application.

This is what the curator’s Museum notes say:

The New Career Map (2027)

Donated by the National Association of Interdisciplinary Scientists

The New Career Map was introduced as part of the application and career management process for early career scientists in 2027 as a tool to manage the development of a fully-fledged portfolio science career. Charting the individual’s journey between different sectors, disciplines and experiences, the New Career Map allowed entrants into science, at whatever age or level of experience, to manage their career path in a holistic way, building transferrable skills and recording their professional journey. The New Career Map was adopted by the National Association of Interdisciplinary Scientists as their preferred format for career development in 2028.

See the second Research Culture and Royal Society page for information on the Young's Translator.

A continuation of a project to explore the astonishing scale involved in particle physics, this interactive piece encourages audience participation to explore CERN particles physics laboratory in Geneva.

Whilst my thesis is that art can play a role in improving dialogue between science and the public ultimately benefiting public decision-making, there is no doubt that art galleries can be haughty, sterile and didactic places.

Nicolas Bourriard's concept of relational aesthetics can be instructive in this context. Bourriard argues that the social metamorphosis caused by post-war global urbanisation has changed the way the art gallery works. Instead of being a space to walk through ("the owner's tour"), the contemporary artwork represents "a period of time to be lived through". The city has ushered in and spread hands-on experiences, meaning that now artistic practice takes as its central themes the "encounter between beholder and picture" and the "collective elaboration of meaning".

This thinking informed Microscopic Macroscopic Kaleidoscopic. At first the gallery-goer is presented with something which has all the pretensions of a severe and inaccessible metal-and-plastic contemporary sculpture. However, instead of a human-activated alarm barrier, the work is accompanied by a sign which says 'please play with me'. Upon investigation, this assemblage comprises six familiar toys - kaleidoscopes - sitting on a metal rack. Peering through the kaleidoscope yields a multiplicity of versions of an image from CERN. Each image is from the same series as used in the sister film exploring scale at CERN.

The kaleidoscopes provide an experience of peering through a tiny peephole to find an expanding universe of symmetrical, multiplying images. Through this mechanism, the work tries to convey some of the important themes which underlie research at CERN. Supersymmetry could be essential to understanding the universe, which could actually be a multiverse; the standard model for particle physics breaks down when the very very big tries to squeeze into the very very small, like in the middle of a black hole. The work tries to capture a slightly less expected theme of CERN: upon visiting it is unmissable how senior scientists emphasise the importance of playfulness and discovery in work at CERN.

Microscopic Macroscopic Kaleidoscopic was on show, alongside its sister film, at the CSM x CMS: Entangled exhibition at the Four Corners Gallery on 14-17 June 2017. Visitors played with the kaleidoscopes, looked through them at different objects, and enquired of each other 'what does it mean?'. Hopefully this provided an enjoyable and approachable way of finding out a bit more about particle physics.

The particle physics laboratory CERN is based on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. The organisation is most famous for discovering the Higgs Boson particle.

My practice focuses on how science is used in public decision-making. Evidence suggests that socio-economic and political background affect how people view science. Can high profile and spectacular science can result in a more receptive public across the socio-economic spectrum? 

A potential barrier is the difficulty in picturing the amazing developments at CERN. No one can see particles colliding, and the physical geography is unusual but hardly awe-inspiring. Within these ordinary surroundings, amazing things are happening.

It is hard to appreciate the astonishing scale involved in physics, from the infinitesimal quark to unfathomably big galaxies. From a theoretical point of view the current laws of physics (the Standard Model) break down in situations where immense masses exist in minuscule spaces, such as the Big Bang and black holes. Foucault's The Order of Things (1970) describes how Classical epistemological frameworks were different from modern ways of considering the links between objects. Aemulatio (emulation) was a way to understand how objects could imitate one another from the other side of the universe, operating at vastly different scales.

The project started as a series of photographs taken on night-time dérives of the CERN site. These photos are of ambiguous, confusing and scale-less phenomena. The subject matter could be a galaxy or a planet or a microscopic particle. The aim is to stimulate thinking about the interaction between what happens at a sub-optical level at CERN, and the dialogue these processes and particles have with the universe and its massive structures. The images have now been animated into a short film Microscopic Macroscopic, which was shown at the Four Corners Gallery in Bethnal Green, London on 14-17 June 2017.

Light is projected through the stained glass onto a chalk map drawn on the ground. The stained glass portrays precipitation change data for 2080 from www.climatewizard.org. Darker reds = more significant reduction in rainfall. The data points exactly map onto the projected light on the floor map. Viewers activate the map by blocking out the competing light from a nearby source. The audience walk over the map, explore the interaction between the chalk drawing and the projected light, and take selfies through the glass. At different paces, and through different routes, viewers discover how climate change projections map onto an already vulnerable and tumultuous political situation.

Data is painted onto glass panes with transparent glass paint. Data is sourced from repositories provided by the Office for National Statistics, UCL's Datashine, www.climatewizard.org. Each pane of glass contains the information relating to one variable – for example population change between 2001-2011 (shown in red), incidence of deprivation (turquoise, with lighter/yellow = high incidence of deprivation), proportion voting ‘Leave’ in the EU Referendum (purple), average age (ochre), political voting (colours of the parties), change in precipitation caused by climate change (not shown). Viewers are encourage to overlay the data panes on top of each other, to explore the evidence – and interaction between variables – in a visual and tactile way.

Visitors are encouraged to sit at tables and chairs with an assortment of paints, brushes and paper. A leaflet explains the exercise: paint a 15cm2 paper in a certain colour. The colour exactly matches a map of the Indus Valley (India/Pakistan border). Each 15cm2 paper is a pixel of data showing change in precipitation in 2080. The audience is encouraged to discuss what this might mean for the region, as well as take sheer pleasure in the process of painting.

This series of four painted maps explores whether providing data in a hand-painted and aesthetic manner increases engagement with scientific information. Each painting comprises statistics and data drawn from a range of online and academic sources. The paintings show socio-economic and environmental data, and benefitted from the advice of Professor Richard Black at London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

The first image shows the 11 official languages of South Africa (first image). In certain ways the choice of medium better facilitates portrayal of the data, as the thin transparent paint washes allow us to see how different linguistic groupings interact and overlay in South Africa.

The second image shows the interaction between rainfall anomaly and retail maize grain prices, accessed from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).

The third image shows the interaction between current water risk in Southern Africa (via World Resources Institute's Water Risk database) and projected change in precipitation (via www.climatewizard.org). The fourth image shows the interaction between water risk and political borders. Most often, the water risk has no care about political borders, but in some cases there is an apparent correlation, perhaps because rivers may be used as political boundaries, or simply because of way in which the data is collected.

Original data sources can be found here: 1) 11 official languages of South Africa; 2) rainfall anomaly and retail maize grain prices in southern Africa; 3) water risk in Southern Africa and projected change in precipitation; 4) water risk in Southern Africa and UN maps

Three mixed-media works produced through a combination of paint, photo-transfer and map stencils. The three images are essentially elaborate data visualisations showing scientific information relating to the current and future climate and environment in Ethiopia.

The first image shows soil moisture deviance from historical means in Ethiopia, relating to the 2015 drought corresponding with that year's severe El-Nino. The image comprises thin transparent paint washes, layered onto a digital photo-collage originally transferred onto primed board. The photos are the author's original.

The second image includes the same 2015 drought data. For this image, the soil moisture data (portrayed in yellow) is overlaid with painted pixels showing projected change in average temperate through the twenty-first century (portrayed in shades of red).

The third image again shows climate data, but this time changing future daily rainfall intensity in Ethiopia between now and 2081-2100. It is interesting to note that in large parts of Ethiopia, rainfall intensity will increase over the next 60-80 years (the bluer shades), perhaps unexpected given most equatorial parts of Africa will experience reduced precipitation.

Sources: Soil moisture deviance from historical means in Ethiopia; climate projections.

This series of four digital collages are based conceptually and materially on two other series. The base painting from the 'Mountains' image in the Weather from Made-up Lands is overlaid with the photo-collage from the Ethiopia Data Paintings series. A range of digital mixing techniques are used to distill four alternative interpretations of the same imagery.

The images are intended to convey a sense of the variability and uncertainty inherent in environmental information. Everyone who lives in a place with seasons will know that the land can feel very different in winter compared to summer, or a dry season compared to a wet season.

So too can a country look very different under one climate scenario compared to another. Uncertainty is inherent in any weather forecast - everyone loves to blame a weather forecaster! Similarly climate predictions have uncertainty and change baked into their existence. The use of different models allows us to be more robust in our predictions. Different scenarios allow us to understand how the future climate is sensitive to current emissions or climate policies.

The work on this page arose out of an exercise prepared by Heather Barnett in the first term of the MA Art and Science at Central St Martins. Students were assigned at random a 'subject matter', a 'method' and a 'material', and required to produce art according to those restrictions. The thesis is that such limitations can force us to explore alternative approaches, ultimately unlocking creative - and unexpected - possibilities. 

The three criteria used were: subject matter = immigration; method = interviewing; material = bacteria.

The images on this page show the resulting work. Certain words have interesting salience in both biological and sociological discourses, including 'colonies', 'colonisation', 'cultures' and 'multiculturalism'.

The first image shown here investigates the semiotics of colonies or empire. The bacteria portrayed in the digital collage is involved in a process of colonisation of its petri dish. The imagery is used to portray the full extent of the British Empire between the years 1754-1912.

The second and third images play with the language around culture. Again the digital collage comprises solely imagery of bacteria, this time a number of different bacteria cultures (in the case of the third image the bacteria portrayed is Rickettsia which causes the Ricketts disease). The digital imagery is then used to build up a mosaic, a beautiful artistic technique originating in Mesopotamia and heavily used in Greek, Roman, Christian, Jewish and Muslim cultures.

Ultimately these works are intended to provoke consideration of the semiotics around migration and sociological discourses, especially where people are dehumanised through the use of explicitly biological terms.

The final image shows the process used to develop the works. There is an interesting coincidence whereby networks are central to both disease transmission, the process of building the artworks (though interviews) and the process of migration. Read this blog for more information on the exercise as a whole.

The images in this series are designed to evoke the kinds of climatic changes being experienced in different parts of the world. The works use imagery and symbols which are familiar from various meteorological and environmental data observations: transparent red shades, created by diluted acrylic paint, indicate warming or drying, whilst transparent blue shades perhaps signify increasing rainfall. 

The thin washes of acrylic paint achieve entirely fictional data overlays. The worlds are also fantastical, created by flicking ochre paint onto primed board. The wet paint is sprayed with water, allowing it to form into rivulets, streams, planes and headlands, and evoking topographical features in 'Made-up Lands'.

Mixed media artworks exploring the link between the image, representation and the global political economy. Developed in 2015-16 with the support of Sophia Kosmaoglou, tutor at Chelsea College of Art's Critical Theory in Contemporary Art Practice short course.

The five studies in this section are produced using a number of mixed-media techniques, learnt through Caroline List's workshops and short courses. Media include acrylic paint, oil paint, photo-transfer, wax, acrylic pens, gel media, glazes and collage, and the images are produced upon MDF board and canvas.

The studies incorporate two important themes used in my work: travel photography and windows. Locations of photographs include various parts of Ecuador, Washington DC, Varanasi, and parts of the British rail network. The techniques used in these studies have been applied in a number of other series, including Ethiopia Data Paintings, and Painted Data Maps of Southern Africa.

This page displays previous investigations into light, tone, colour, surface (depth, texture) and reflection. These studies have helped form a visual language which permeates the other works shown throughout this website.