MSSL Space Lab Residency
The Euclid Mission launched from NASA’s Cape Canaveral, Florida on 1 July 2023. A film about the making of the Fingertip Galaxy artwork for the Euclid Mission spacecraft is available here
‘The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.’ David Bohm
From September 2018 to September 2019, I was artist-in-residence at Mullard Space Science Laboratory (UCL) following the progress of the Euclid Mission, a European Space Agency initiative to explore the dark universe. Initially driven by the aesthetic implications of invisible structure and forces in space, my creative responses have merged with philosophical research into the nature of perception itself through the writings of philosopher Merleau-Ponty and thinker/physicist David Bohm. The exceptional technology of the Euclid telescope will allow man to peer deeper than ever into space, forming fresh perceptions of the cosmic landscape and testing existing concepts held by scientists and artists alike. Using installation, sculpture and imagery, I questioned how we are to imagine this emerging understanding of the universe though human sensory experience.
This Arts Council England funded residency included interviews with scientists and engineers from the Euclid team and studying aspects of the VIS instrument that will record billions of galaxies and provide crucial evidence of the web-like structure of dark matter through optical phenomena called gravitational lensing. Research included extensive lab and engineering workshop visits, a trip to meet principal Euclid managers at ESA in the Netherlands and attending the annual consortium meeting in Helsinki. In order to promote creative thinking at MSSL Space Lab and get to know the staff, I led eight creative workshops including a collaborative artwork that will be placed on the Euclid spacecraft before launch in 2022. A film about the residency brings together my experiences and artistic responses to this extraordinary mission. I’ve written about the residency on my blog.
Emerging Cosmic Landscape
17-27 October 2019, Lumen Gallery, St John on Bethnal Green
200 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9PA
Symposium
24 October, 6-8.15pm, UCL London
Exploring the benefits of art/science relationships, this event discusses Lisa Pettibone’s year-long residency at Mullard Space Science Laboratory (UCL) along with collaborator Dr Tom Kitching, science lead on MSSL’s Euclid Mission. Complementing the concurrent exhibition at Lumen Crypt Gallery, London, a short film will be premiered documenting her extensive access to the lab, aesthetic responses that influenced her work and creative workshops with MSSL staff. Ben Murray, data scientist Kings College London and co-director of Phenotypica, will discuss the unique nature of interdisciplinary collaborations and their potential effects on wider culture.
Glass, fabric and aluminium installation Cosmic Landscape at Lumen Gallery London
Cosmic Landscape, glass, fabric and aluminium installation
Since mankind evolved to an upright stance, we have scanned distant views to locate ourselves in the environment. The urge to map our surroundings to the furthest extent possible has been with us for hundreds of years motivating seafaring nations and international space exploration alike. Driven by leaps in technology, our gaze is rapidly expanding. Grasping the perceptual perimeters of the cosmological horizon, the Euclid Mission casts its net deep into the geometry of space. Will Einstein’s beautiful theory of gravity still hold it all together?
Cosmic Landscape, blue glass floor tiles with glass-chip galaxy drawing
Cosmic Landscape, moon image from NASA 1971, screen printed on glass and bent
Truth in Illusion, light projection installation
Quantum physicist David Bohm, who was interested in how paradigms occur, described perception as a feedback loop of sensory information, abstract analysis and re-testing our environment as we build up a structure of reality based on consistent experiences. Fresh information can be discarded because it doesn’t fit what we know or can warrant new investigations. However, once we understand a concept, it is impossible to see the original perception in the same way.
Unexpected arcs of light detected by astrophysicists in deep space appear illusory at first. When it was understood that these smears of light were in fact distorted light from galaxies bent by the gravitational pull of dark matter, they began to calculate the shape of this mysterious, invisible stuff. For example, reflected light on the bottom of a pool tells us the fluid contours of the surface even though the water is transparent. In this piece, the variance of light and shadow create a narrative about twisted, clear glass.
Enfolding, glass sculpture, and Language of Light 1, C-type photo print
Enfolding: Brilliant stars in the night sky appear to be two-dimensional as the extreme contrast eliminates depth. Yet we know that these points of light exist in a three-dimensional space often as spherical bodies in elliptical orbits. Now imagine that the black space between them is full of enveloping structure – this is how scientists describe the web of dark matter and dark energy filling the cosmos. Our old ideas about the universe are collapsing.
Language of Light 1: While gazing out to sea at Lizard Point, Cornwall, I was intensely aware of the cosmos. Light rained down on the glittering water – reminding me that sunshine from our nearest star and unhindered cosmic rays, bombard the planet everyday. Scientists have another way of describing this scene through mathematics. The numbers in this montage represent light levels collected from astral data used to test the Euclid Mission VIS instrument, a telescope that will be recording millions of galaxies daily from 2022. Indicating stars, galaxies and cosmic rays they express a mathematical interpretation of light.
However, the mathematical is indebted to sensory experience. Philosopher Merleau-Ponty believed that the body is the first site of knowing. Sensation happens before understanding, before analysing, before calculating. He said ‘science manipulates things and gives up living in them’ but the artist ‘lends his body to the world’ and by filtering experience through art, can bring us back to the innocence of the sensory.
Language of Light 1, C-type photo print
Enfolding, lustred glass
Remnants of Attraction, fused and slumped glass on black glass base
During the process of trying to grasp the concept of dark matter, I asked myself: what is the shape and texture of invisible matter? Capturing voids and recording volume is something I can do by cloaking a mould with glass. Many of the pieces I used were broken from a larger mould. Science is also fragmented in its understanding.
Found Missing, screen print on 50% cotton Fabriano 5 paper, edition of 12
The conundrum of dark matter leaves us in staring at a tantalizing blind spot. How can an invisible thing with the inexorable pull of matter evade our eyes? We rely on science to poke at fundamental concepts that move outside our sphere of comprehension. The pattern of our universe is so tied to this, perhaps impossible, question that we must find new ways to measure the cosmos in hopes of detecting why so much of the world has avoided our gaze and is slipping into infinity.
This work uses the European Space Agency’s commissioned Flagship Mock Galaxy Catalogue data. Using a tiny portion of the Swiss supercomputer generated pattern, it shows the evolution of a synthetic universe depicting the clumping of matter (visible and invisible) leading to the formation of galaxies like our Milky Way.
The central shape in the print was traced from a meteorite found in Sweden in 1906 thought to be billions of years old.
Creative workshops at MSSL 2018-19
The Euclid Mission will map 3/4 of the galaxies in the universe searching for distortions indicating the structure of dark matter.
At ESA's ESTEC centre near Amsterdam and at CERN in Geneva scientists are trying to explore 'The Dark Side', the mysterious forces of dark matter and dark energy which are thought to rule the cosmos. The Euclid space telescope will soon offer from space a unique point of view while on the ground, looking at the atom level, the particles accelerator can offer new observations.