Design Challenge 10

Posted by Catherine Watling

{Minutiae} Creating a meaningful ‘virtual’ experience of microfossils foraminifera
 
Catherine Watling and Professor Paul Pearson (Head of Palaeoclimatology at the University of Cardiff Department of Earth Ocean and Planetary Sciences)

Summary

I am currently working in collaboration with Professor Paul Pearson, Head of the Palaeoclimatology Group at the University of Cardiff Department of Earth, Ocean and Planetary Sciences where I have been Artist in Residence for the past seven months. Together we have been working on the development of a series of 3d movies imaged using the Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM), a microscope that allows you to view objects that are no more than one million of a millimetre in size.  We have been exploring the possibility of using microscopic foraminifera, imaged using the (ESEM), to explore themes of environmental change and evolution in a series of artworks.  These artworks have so far taken the form of 2d stop-frame animations and very short 3d films. 

This project exemplifies my desires to allow people to experience the wonder of scientific discovery.  I want to re-create the hyper-real moment when you view, for the first time, an object that is incomprehensibly small and breathtakingly beautiful under the eye of an Electron Microscope.  In that moment you get an overwhelming sense of your relationship to other living and non-living things in the universe. A tiny speck of dust becomes a complex sculptural network of interconnecting chambers, protrusions and surface tensions, all designed for a specific purpose - to sustain life.  I find it incredibly powerful to see such complexity in a single cell and it allows me to reflect upon just how complex we are as human beings and how far we have come from that cell.  I want to communicate that wonder to others.

Throughout my work with science I have been fascinated by the difference between the artistic image and the scientific image as modes of expression. The scientific image is often created objectively, to be read as a series of data and is presented as fact.  It often adheres to strict conventions of colour and form that depict something very specific to the specialist scientist/observer.  The artistic image, although similar in some ways, is presented and received in a context of subjectivity.  I am interested in exploring how the Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope can be used as an artistic tool and whether the resulting artwork will percieved as art, science or a new type of hybrid.

With this project, as with the interdisciplinary projects I have undertaken in the past, the collaborative journey has been and continues to be as important as the final outcome. For me a fundamental role of art is to communicate. The language and terminology of specialist disciplines can be esoteric and difficult for non-specialists to understand. An essential part of any successful cross-discipline collaboration is first simply finding a way of understanding each other. Once that common ground is established it is then a matter of communicating your parallel ideas to others.  Professor Pearson and I have already established a very clear understanding of one another and it is now the challenge of expressing our interest in foraminifera and their relevance to greater themes that faces us.  It is my aim to make a meaningful artwork, in full collaboration with Professor Pearson that achieves this.

In terms of creating an artwork I want to make an experience, which is at once magical and involving.  An installation that massages the senses and offers a unique glimpse into an alien natural world.  A work which has elements of the Victorian fascination of the weird and wonderful; a ‘cabinet of curiosity’, alongside elements of futuristic sensual interactivity and immersion.  I want to let people catch holographic foaminifera in their hands.  See them appear in three dimensions as if they were human-size.  Peer into a looking glass and see a revolving jewel. Wonder at the beauty of such a small thing and learn just a little bit more about themselves and their place within the world they inhabit.

Through a unique and engaging interface I hope to be able to address important issues of climate change, global warming and our evolution from single cell to complex human being.  I hope to be able to allow people to think about and reflect upon these enormous topics, which in one way or another affect every person on this planet.