Art and Science - Flat Earth Installation

Art and Science exhibition was on Monday! Making the installation itself took a fair amount of work and took me out of my comfort zone venturing into the woodwork department. I didn't know how it would look all together until I assembled everything on the day of the exhibition and I was pleasantly surprised - while it's garish it isn't as horrendous as I'd feared which is the main thing.

The installation uses primary colours plus black and white. I decided to exclude other colours as a reference to exclusion of evidence and I actually really like the way it looks. All the elements focus on the idea of Zetetics - trusting your senses above all other evidence which ties in nicely with my visual way of thinking about things as an artist.

I also edited the conversation between David and Adam to manipulate their words and make it seem as they were in support of flat earth theory.

The installation got mixed reactions probably due to the "eye-catching" nature of it but I love the way it looks and I'm really proud of it! It was nice to work on a larger scale and I feel I definitely challenged myself producing some of the elements. All in all a good semesters work!

Art and Science - Flat Earth Project

This semester has been a bit different as I've been doing an elective module - Art and Science - alongside my core illustration work which has made a nice change. It took me a while to get into it as there was no brief for the module which was initially intimidating for me as a designer, however now I'm really enjoying the freedom that's given me.

Initially I did quite a lot of research. I spoke with a couple of scientists - a biochemist working on sleeping sickness and a physicist who specialises in ultrafast photonics.

I enjoyed talking about physics as I loved it at school but I didn't want to do anything too serious for the project. I went to see the Turner Prize exhibition in Glasgow and was inspired by Bonnie Camplin's installation. I liked the idea of finding evidence for something and that people can prove anything if they omit certain facts and highlight others. This sparked a memory of an article I'd read years ago about the Flat Earth Society who are basically just a group of people who believe the earth is flat. I started looking into flat earth theory and thinking about how you could go about proving it.

I spoke to David (the physicist I had had an initial conversation with) about it and obviously he was pretty flabbergasted at the whole idea and really struggled with how he would go about finding evidence for the flat earth. I then recorded him and his friend Adam (another physicist) discussing how to prove that the earth was flat.

I considered what visual evidence you could use in support of flat earth theory - most of it pretty simple - for example, everyone is standing up, water is level etc (flat earth believers don't believe in gravity). I started working on some acetone transfers with screen prints using photos I'd found in encyclopedias and my own scribbly diagrams and writing.

I decided I wanted to create an installation of flat earth theory incorporating the recorded conversation with my prints and objects. As the final exhibition for the module would be in the life sciences building which isn't an ideal space I decided to create a wooden structure which I would be free to paint and stick things onto so I didn't have to compromise my idea.

scale model