Liliane Lijn - Artist in residence NASA, 2005

 

 

 

Liliane Lijn, 1st Artist in Residence at Space Science Laboratory, California.  Three month project working with 30-40 scientists.  Lijn was interested in interrelationships.  Their project was about the transformation of energy from one state to another. 

‘If we understand how energy flows, how energy is transferred from one form to another’ says Dr. Andreas Keiling, ‘then we can say that we have understood the phenomena’.

Each scientist looks at the movement and transformation of energy in areas as diverse as waveforms in music and maths, solar flares, the building of a spacecraft, the aurora borealis, the mixing of stellar and laser light and the crustal magnetic fields of Mars. Similarly, Lijn’s multi-facetted practice views the world as flux and energy and this video interweaves her work, in a counterpoint to the scientists’ observations, to create a visual/verbal dialogue between science and art.

 

While there Lijn worked with aerogel a material produced for NASA.  She liked its otherworldly qualities. 

 

  

See  http://www.lilianelijn.com/heavenly-fragments.html

 

Moonmeme, 2009

Real-time computer simulation

In Moonmeme, the artist reveals her concept to write on the Moon from the Earth using a laser beam. The word 'SHE" is projected onto the surface of the moon, the meaning of this word being gradually transformed as the Moon moves through its phases.

 

The image you see tracks the real moon's phase and updates every 26 hours and 13 minutes.

This project is an homage to the feminine principal of transformation and renewal which for millennia was held sacred in the form of the full moon and its recurring monthly cycle.

 

Digital artwork by Richard Wilding

Lunar phase source material by Tom Ruen

Astronomical calculations by Paul Millar in collaboration with John Campbell Brown

 

 

 

Multisensory art

 

Kinetic art

 

Akram Khan choreographer

Listen in to hear Akram Khan's explanation of the importance of going to the creative space within to reveal the unmediated communication with ourselves we only find in stillness.

In the dance he refers to as 'vertical road'  - a 'new starting point' - Khan makes a distinction between the usual sense of Western, horizontal, linear, clock time which we serve and Eastern time to which he attributes the qualities: feminine, seasonal and human - life and death time.

Khan also reflects on how uncomfortable it feels to be full of potential energy prior to releasing it into kinetic energy. 

Open University S260 Thin Rock Sections

 

 

Video - Magma Arta: Rocks under the Microscope, Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge University

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artfeb04/iwouslides2.html

 

 

I am fortunate in that my husband owned the materials and microscope relating to this OU course. 

I used the microscope to create micro paintings which I spent hours viewing and manipulating with an etching needle and experimenting with ink, paint and varnish.   See post: Transformers. 

Selected slides for the image gallery.

 

 

 

 

General: Gypsum is a mineral and appears colourless in thin sections, it is the chief constituent of gypsum rock. Gypsum when accurately cut to the required thickness was commonly used with polarizing microscopes as a 'sensitive tint' plates or 1st order red plates which could be inserted into the light path of a microscope using crossed-polars.

This slide: Under plane polarised light you can clearly see one of the cleavage planes and from the crossed-polar image some of the interference colours. Gypsum has a low birefringence value of 0.009 and would normally show only weak interference colours of the 1st order similar to quartz in thin section, but this section is much thicker in parts and showing stronger interference colours.

 

Slide [C], Peridotite from Italy.

 General: Peridotite is an igneous rock comprising mostly olivine, pyroxene and hornblende. Chromite [a source of chromium] is often associated with peridotite.

 

 

Some images inspire painting while others inspire drawing

General: Diorite is an igneous rock.

This sample: the left and right images are from different parts of the slide, in the crossed-polar image a central crystal thought to be biotite can be seen surrounded by feldspar showing various degrees of twinning.

 

 

Slide [D], Diorite from Italy.

  

Slide [G], Dolerite from Clee Hill.  General: Dolerite is an igneous rock and is one of the varieties of basalt and coarse grained in texture.

 

I was instantly fascinated by the complex structures of rocks only revealed at a microscopic level and at the magnificent colours created using UV light and coloured filters.   

 

This led me to make contact with the Sedgwich Museum, Cambridge and Essex University on the hunt for a collaborator who would be willing to share a his/her microscope in return for art!  Such sophisticated microscopes are extraordinarily expensive.  See post Bio-imaging of Coral.