Tuesday 22 October 2013

Visualising the Invisible - Ghost Particles


‘Something very strange is happening to you right now, a swarm of ghosts is flowing through your body’.







Through working with paper, print, collage and olive oil I have tried to tackle the problem of visualising the Neutrino’s distinct characteristics described here by the narrator of ‘Project Poltergeist ‘, BBC television’s Horizon’s documentary on Ghost Particles.

At first I created paper sets, constructed from full colour page magazine photographs of interiors of university libraries, neatly cutting slits in bookcase lined walls for spectral paper Victorian Ladies and Gentlemen to glide through. This response of a familiar visual figurative world; the tradition of the headless horsemen and the wandering Nun (complied by ghost hunters such as Harry Price and Peter Isherwood) had a limited resonance. I realised I wasn’t interested in materialisation of the invisible; I wanted my materials to disappear.

During the summer I noticed a piece of oil stained paper, pinned to a dirty wall of an empty art school room. Returning to my studio picking up materials at hand; old brushes, cartridge paper and olive oil, I recreated the translucent surface I had observed, so images, paper, jay cloths and other things could ‘pass through visually’ as it were. I felt results of this experiment resonated sensations and feelings I had at first experienced in learning about Neutrinos flowing charateristics.   



I've longlast managed to photograph my contribution to the Jiggling Atoms Physics Illustration Exhibition - at the time of the show the work was never recorded - so here it is ! 


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