Particulars

Particulars is a new work by London Fieldworks artists, Gilchrist and Joelson which will be created during a residency in and around Allenheads and the Upper Allen Valley in summer 2003. The Particulars project will be presented to the public in October 2003, as part of a weekend event at Allenheads Contemporary Arts, Northumberland.

"…I believe that we will gradually come to appreciate that the things that cannot be known, that cannot be done, and cannot be seen, define our universe more clearly, more completely, and more sharply than those that can".

John D. Barrow, "Impossibility"
Professor of Astronomy

As scientific theory develops, there is an inevitable impact on the world-view, or paradigms, of scientists. The models they use to transmit ideas and relationships between things in the world become redundant and need to be constantly updated. This ultimately interacts with our imagination as we struggle to give form to imaginary notions of a fundamental reality: how are we to imagine the orbit of an electron around a nucleus or the composition of an atom?

The depiction of the atom and its attendant electrons in the early 20th century is an interesting example. In 1903 the prevailing model was of a plum pudding, with electrons embedded in a sphere of positive energy. The introduction of quantum theory produced a cloud model where the position and velocity of the electron at any moment around the nucleus is impossible to predict. Within a period of two decades a metaphor used to describe a fundamental law of nature slips from culinary to meteorological - the imagery becomes increasingly subtle and open to a more poetic interpretation.

Through the mediated, popularisation of science, dark matter, solar wind and exotic sub-atomic particles enter into our daily consciousness.

Through the Particulars project, the artists aim to focus on the building blocks of matter - the atom and its constituents - and specifically how this stuff is visualised by a lay-imagination.

The Particulars project will engage with scientists from the region, inviting them to describe fundamental particles: electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks etc. These initial, recorded conversations will be used as inspiration and soundtrack for mixed-media visualisations of the phenomena described - a series of physical models, video and computer visualisations.