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.

Where are you from is a participatory data visualisation, produced with ~100 attendees of a science festival at Imperial University. Audience members were presented with an empty grid, showing 10 degree intervals of longitude and latitude. Festival attendees were asked "Where are you from?" Upon deciding their answer, participants affixed a transparent red square onto the grid. After the event, the data was transposed to a 36x18 grid of glass tiles. Each tile represents a data point; glass towers grow in the most popular locations.

The work is intended to explore questions of authorship and collaboration. Similar to Participatory Data Visualisation of Climate Impacts in the Indus Valley, the work was dependent upon the audience. Nicolas Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics is an important influence; the idea that artworks can drive social relationships and build mini, transitory communities on specific topics. This is more important than ever when data is an increasingly prevalent, yet alienating, medium for understanding and planning our lives. Artwork can build agency and understanding relating to data and information.

The exercise addresses questions relating to identity, maps and statistics. One participant mused “I was born in Mumbai, but feel British" – where do I stick the square? A Chinese student assumed that the large cluster of dots in the middle of the map represented China, on the basis that "whenever I see a map of the world, China is in the middle of it". Her partner, from South Carolina, argued that the centre of the map was more likely to represent Britain. Another lady, from Cyprus, put her sticker in the far bottom right (near the coordinates for Australia), initially thinking the map showed Europe. Some individuals deliberately disrupted the data. One placed seven of the transparent squares on China "to make it redder". Another placed three stickers, representing three parts of the world he had spent time in during his early years (Chile, UK and the Middle East).

The work shows only what it shows: participants’ answer to the question ‘where are you from?’ In many respects the data is disrupted, imprecise, partial, and above all human. The crystalline aesthetic is intended to create a deliberate tension between an appearance of perfection, and highly subjective content.

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.

Mapping the Terrain is an installation built for the Central Saint Martins Art Lab in December 2017. The installation comprises four loosely corresponding elements which hover around the framing of the environment, and valuing what we might find in small samples of terrain.

A centrepiece of the installation is an ordinary classroom desk, tattooed with a soil geology map of South East England taken from the Natural England-led 'Magic Map' interactive data set. I found immense haptic pleasure in drawing the Sharpie pen over the whitewashed desk, and visitors remarked on the aesthetic appeal of the intense mark-making. The map serves a practical purpose too: six rectangular boxes are placed around the map, each containing earth from that specific location. People are encouraged to pick up and inspect the earth boxes, some of which are stamped with environmental or social data relating to the source of the earth: soil type, population, population density.

Looking down onto this scene are nine square abstract photographs. Underneath the photographs is another desk, with a 15cm square area marked off with black tape. Comparing the two arrangements, one can see that at middle left is a blown-up photograph of the 15cm square. A wander around the gallery will reveal eight other framed samples of the art room terrain.

In my eyes, the captured art room surfaces are beautiful, rich in ochres, umbers and gun metal greys. The marked off squares are sites of studio archaeology, each hinting at the historical processes causing the current appearance: a desk spillage from an experiment, hastily scribbled notes from a crit, the unintentional stencil of an object painted on the floor.

By framing a square in a part of the studio – and showing large photos of each scene – I am consciously encouraging viewers to investigate the ignored and celebrate the beauty of everyday surfaces. There is a link back to the boxes of earth which are exhibiting the earth we walk on every day. Soil is an elementary substance, hugely valuable in determining which plants can be grown and which buildings can be constructed. Science institutions like the John Innes Centre examine how soil contains carbon which can affect global warming, and microbes which can solve antimicrobial resistance.

In summary, this installation is a celebration of the everyday, but also an ode to the sampling, studying and research which is essential for all our future prosperity - and survival. 

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.

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 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.

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 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