SRG Bennett

Over recent decades life expectancy (LE) has risen in the UK, a success story resulting from improvements in lifestyles and medical care. The onset of age-related disability has not receded as quickly. One scenario of the future sees many of us living for longer in poor health, becoming dependent on medical support and care - a ‘medicalised vision’ of later life. But the burden of ill-health in later life is not shared equally across the country. Across the UK there is a gap of just over 20 years between the highest and lowest ages of average disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) – the number of years a person can expect to live without a limiting persistent illness or disability.

The 20 Year Gap installation draws attention to these different scenarios of ageing. The artwork was created by myself and Cath Sleeman from Nesta, and was first shown at FutureFest which took place in London’s Tobacco Dock on 6 & 7 July 2018. The installation shows the average DFLE and LE, visualised through 216 hanging threads. Each thread corresponded to a local area in the UK, and each held both a blue and amber medicine bottle. The height of each blue bottle represented life expectancy, and the height of each amber medicine bottles represented DFLE in each local area. The gap between amber bottles shows the inequality in health across the UK; the gap between amber and blue bottles shows the length of time people in different places will experience ill-health.

The installation was interactive, as we asked viewers to respond to the data by completing a card which read ‘I would address the 20 year gap by…’. Participants responded in creative ways, with suggestions ranging from early years education to controlling sugar in packaged foods to rebalancing the economy.

This page shows a body of work produced and reinterpreted as part of a residency with Lumen, a space-arts collective based in Bethnal Green. The residency took place in Atina, Italy, and includes exhibitions at the Chiesa San Francesco as part of the Assumption of Mary festival in Atina (August 2017), and at the Crypt Gallery in Euston, London (January 2018).

Through the residency I experimented with using the sun to compose artwork, including solar printing with cyanotypes and lumen prints. The Mediterranean was in the midst of heatwaves and droughts, with Atina plagued by forest fires. 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.

This body of work includes 2D cyanotype maps. Cyanotypes are alternative photography processes, first developed by the astronomer John Herschel in the 19th Century. The bottle green cyanotype liquid is painted onto a ground, such as paper, and becomes bright blue when exposed in the sun; unexposed cyanotype is washed away to reveal the ground. I used this technique to produce a solar exposed map of environmental change in the Mediterranean. I split a map of the basin into 96 squares or (data pixels), each exposed to the sun for different times depending on the environmental change predicted by scientists. Some data squares, generally in the north, are completely underexposed and invisible. Others, especially in the Mediterranean, are much deeper blue in colour, literally exposed to the sun’s rays for too long. Another 2D work shows the same map of climate change in Italy exposed every hour through a day for 500 seconds, the length of time it takes for the sun’s rays to reach the earth. This work is a different take on a data visualiation. Whilst the core image is a climate data map, the strength of the image is directly affected by some of the data in question, in this case the strength of the sun at different times of the day. There’s almost a circularity to the concept of depicting information about the weather using the sun as a part of the methodology. The climate change data is sourced from www.climatewizard.org.

The work for the Chiesa San Francesco was designed around 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, heat and viscosity. Periodically a candle would snuff out, emitting reams of smoke. Individuals made offerings to pay for new candles to replace those who had expired, to carry on illuminating the map of Europe.

These themes were further developed for the work in the Crypt Gallery, which includes two panels of 24 glass tiles. On one panel I used the same 24 glass tiles of water risk as in the Chiesa San Francesco, positioned on clear glass to allow the surfaces of the crypt to come through the artwork. In producing the 24 cyanotype glass tiles in Italy, I made a number of mistakes. Some of the tiles were baked in the hot sun for too long, becoming crusty and losing the data from the maps. Some are completely washed away. Unexpectedly this imagery gives a sense of a political and ecological scenario where science about climate change is ignored. This is the material which makes up the second glass panel. This work, comprising the two panels, is called European Scenarios.

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 is a 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. Julie Light and I lead a group of fellow MA students to develop artefacts from a future research system.

Each artefact was specifically designed to provoke a dialogue about particular part of research culture. Julie curated the artefacts into a Museum of Extraordinary Objects, set in 2035. I produced 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.

The Young’s Translator aims 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. 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, including the Museum’s catalogue. See here for David Miller's brilliant winning entry to Waldegrave's competition to explain the Higg's Mechanism in plain English.

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.

CERN provides an interesting avenue for investigating the use of science in public decision-making. Evidence suggests that socio-economic and political background affect how people view science. Can high profile and spectacular science, such as that undertaken at CERN, create the conditions for support for science across the socio-economic spectrum? 

A potential barrier is visualising the scientific research. It is hard to appreciate the astonishing scale involved in physics, from the infinitesimal quark to unfathomably big galaxies. No one can see particles colliding, and the physical geography of CERN is unusual but hardly awe-inspiring. Within these ordinary surroundings, amazing things are happening.

The Microscopic, Macroscopic project aimed to convey a sense of the excitement and wonder of CERN’s research for a wider audience.

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 images were then animated into a film Microscopic Macroscopic which explores the dialogue between what happens at a sub-optical level at CERN, and the universe and its massive structures. This film has been shown at the Four Corners Gallery in Bethnal Green, London in 2017, and the Edge Arts Visions of Science exhibition at Andrew Brownsword Gallery, Bath, UK where it was shortlisted for the University of Bath’s Visions of Science Art Prize 2018.

Finally the images were incorporated into six kaleidoscopes. 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. For example, Supersymmetry could be essential to understanding the universe (which could actually be a multiverse). Additionally, 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. Finally senior scientists emphasise the importance of playfulness and discovery their in work at CERN.

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 page comprises two series which use paint to depict data. Both sets are from 2017; the Ethiopia series predates the South Africa series. 

This South Africa series 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 formerly of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

The first image shows the 11 official languages of South Africa (first image). In a way the medium better facilitates portrayal of this 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 and projected change in precipitation.

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 easily translate into political boundaries, or simply because of way in which the data is collected.

The Ethiopia series is a proto-version of these ideas. The three mixed-media works are produced through a combination of paint, photo-transfer and map stencils. The 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. 

In many ways producing an image of data using paint is a pointless, inaccurate and fruitless task. Yet it does pose questions. Using paint to depict data may draw attention to the evidence in a way which may not have happened if the data was left in an obscure online data repository. The paint brings inaccuracies, but more inaccuracy comes from the arbitrary boundaries between measurement units or data pixels. Does the inclusion of photographic imagery or bright colours increase our emotional engagement with the information - and to what end? Ultimately, however, the paintings are a celebration of the beauty of good old geeky data.

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) & 4) water risk in Southern Africa and 3) projected change in precipitation; 4) UN maps; 5) & 6) Soil moisture deviance from historical means in Ethiopia; climate projections; 6) & 7) climate projections.

The two images portrayed here consider the UK's ageing population. Both are based on Office for National Statistics data, and explore whether art can make complex information more accessible or engaging.

The first image shows self-reported health data, specifically percentage of individuals rating their health as 'not good'. Each acrylic-painted rectangle represents a data point which is coded as follows: white = a very low percentage consider themselves in poor health; black = a very high percentage. The furthest left = youngest age group, younger than 4 years old. the furthest right = the oldest age group surveyed, 85 years and older. The top row shows the data for the least deprived communities in society; the bottom row shows the data for the most deprived communities. The image shows that people in the poorest communities experience increasingly accelerating poor health from their early 30s to their late 50s. Differences in self-reported health are smaller at very young and very old ages, but even at age 85 people in richer communities still feel healthier than their counterparts in poorer communities.

The second image shows a map of ageing populations in the South East, specifically percentage of the population older than the State Pension Age (SPA). The darker black charcoal shows higher proportions above the SPA. The lighter areas represent London and especially south and east London. Areas south of London have much greater proportions of older populations than London itself, with Brighton - the only other major city in the region - the exception.

The black/white aesthetics are deliberately chosen. Partly they allow an exploration of tonality and especially subtle shifts in value, as explored in previous studies. But partly they are intended to provoke consideration of problematic stereotypes in discourses about ageing - for example how grey is a colour often associated with older individuals.

Sources: 1) health inequality by deprivation; 2) maps of population age groups