
“The Sun, the Moon, the Earth and its contents are material to form greater things, that is, ethereal things - greater things than the Creator himself has made” - John Keats, 1817
Panel speakers: Fiona Crisp, Nahum Mantra, Tara Shears, Suchitra Sebastian
Moderator: Nicola Triscott
THE LIVE CREATURE AND ETHEREAL THINGS: BRINGING PHYSICS INTO THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE
6.30pm - 8.30pm, Thu 12 October 2017
Arts Catalyst
74-76 Cromer Street
London
WC1H 8DR
Booking Essential
Fiona Crisp, Safe Haven 2010; Giclée print from colour transparency; Courtesy the artist
Many areas of contemporary science - including cosmology, particle physics and astrophysics - operate at scales and levels of complexity that lie beyond the imaginative and cognitive grasp of most people. Historically, Western culture measured space and time through the body, but over the centuries science and technology have pursued knowledge beyond the edges of bodily perception, from the macro extremes of the multiverse to the micro-scale of the sub-atomic world. If so much knowledge comes through scientific instruments and mathematics, how can we humans - biological sensing beings that the philosopher John Dewey refers to as the “live creative” – make sense of it within our own experience?
This panel discussion forms part of a research project initiated by artist and academic Fiona Crisp with Arts Catalyst. Crisp’s Leverhulme-funded research project employs non-documentary photography and film to bring science back within our world as experience by using still and moving imagery to place us in a bodily relation to the physical spaces and laboratories where fundamental science is performed.