Laboratory of Dark Matters

In 2017 nine artists produced new work inspired by the original research of astrophysicists searching for dark matter at Boulby Underground Laboratory. Exhibitions and events took place at Guest Projects in London, Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum, Whitby Museum and UCL London.

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Laboratory of Dark Matters

In 2017 a group of nine artists responded to the work of astrophysicists at the Underground Boulby Laboratory. Their investigations into the unknown resulted in a series of exhibitions and events.

This project has now ended. Watch this short film for a glimpse of the new artwork created by the artists.

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Discussion Group on Dark Matter(s)

UCL’s Institute of Education 

Room 417, Committee Room 1, 20 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL

Tuesday 31st of October, 18:30-20:45  

From the beginning of time to this day, Dark Matter has played a magnificent role in the evolution of the Universe. This discussion group, framed between science art and literature, aims to explore the multiple facets of this mysterious form of matter. Three selected pieces of text will be presented as examples of the impact of the dark and elusive in how we perceive physics, culture and everyday life. The evening will encourage the open discussion between participants on the individual texts, but also aim to identify the differences and similarities in the pieces' attempt to capture the subject. Refreshments will be provided. 

Texts for discussion:

Symmetry Magazine: The origins of dark matter.

From the primordial soup of the Big Bang to freeze-out and the WIMP miracle.

Chantal Faust: Dark Matters a specially commissioned essay for Laboratory of Dark Matters

This event will launch a beautiful publication of this text which will be available to participants

Kader Attia: The Loop

Planetary Computing (Is the Universe Actually a Gigantic Computer?)

Sign up via Eventbrite to reserve your place.

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Exhibition at Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum 26/07/2017 - 02/09/2017 Participating artists: Kate Fahey, Daniel Clark, Luci Eldridge, Melanie King, Susan Eyre, Amy Gear, Elizabeth Murton, Peter Glasgow, Sarah Gillett and Robert Good  

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Saturday 19th August 

Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum

Exhibition Tours led by Elizabeth Murton at 12pm and 3pm

Robert Good will be reading from Edward Irving's 1905 book How To Know The Starry Heavens at 1pm and 4pm

We will be joined by Boulby Underground Laboratory Scientists Emma Meehan and Chris Toth who will gladly answer questions on dark matter research and work at Boulby 

Free drop in activities from 11am - 5pm

http://ironstonemuseum.co.uk/

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Join us at Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum, Deepdale Mill Lane, Skinningrove, Cleveland TS13 4AP for some fun quizzes, games and activities. Chat with Boulby Underground Laboratory scientists about the cutting edge dark matter research they are engaged in. Hear from the artists about the work they have been making in response to the idea that 95% of the universe is a dark mystery.  

Drop in activities 11am - 5pm 

Family friendly and free.

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Robert Good How To Know the Starry Heavens (text fragments 2017 Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum installation) is an attempt to distil the magical sense of wonder that is contained in Edward Irving's book of the same name. As such it is both unashamedly a homage to the quality and clarity of Irving's writing, and an attempt to revive his work for a new generation.

Written in 1905, the original How To Know the Starry Heavens is a book of astronomy for the layman that explains the vastness of the universe and the workings of the stars carefully and authoritatively, whilst always maintaining an almost childlike sense of wonder and marvel. Dedicated to "all true citizens of the Great Cosmos" it is a celebration of "the greatest of all the dramas".

I found my copy of the book in a the corner of a junk shop, discarded and unloved, but it was immediately obvious that this was a special find. The pictures alone transported me to another place and time - both back to the elegance of the Edwardian era and across to the outermost reaches of the known universe. But it is the language that is so evocative, so painterly. On any page he may be talking not just about far distant galaxies and the speed of light, but also about the priests of Odin, the eruption of Krakatoa or Eruptive Calcium Flocculi. Who could fail to be mesmerised by talk of stars "strewn through space like the blinding snowflakes of a Western blizzard" or "clinging together like Siamese twins"?

So Irving's book and his use of language situates the study of astronomy firmly within the context of the mind-boggling absurdity of our human existence. By using imagery, narrative and quotation alongside hard, uncompromising scientific fact (although the book is in places imaginatively descriptive he never once plays down the primacy of the scientific method), Irving goes beyond cold data to place us firmly but minutely within the night sky that he illuminates so well, and encourages us to share in his sense of wonder, excitement and possibility.

Irving and Dark Matter

Irving wrote How To Know the Starry Heavens in 1905, the same year that Einstein revolutionised our thinking on Space and Time. As such, he is writing before our current modern age of astrophysics and so makes no direct references to such concepts as Relativity, the Big Bang, black holes, quantum mechanics, the existence of the planet Pluto or indeed Dark Matter.

It is fascinating to read, therefore, of how the universe was described in his time, which was an age that had rejected creationist myths and yet had no clear scientific consensus on how to replace them. Irving does not duck the big questions, however. For example, in a paragraph entitled "Outside Universes" Irving suggests something perhaps akin to what we would now call a multiverse:

The study of the visible Universe shows that it is composed of ascending series of similar systems. For example: (1) atoms appear to be spheroidal "star-clusters" of still smaller particles in motion; (2) suns and worlds are rotating spheroids built up of these atoms; (3) stellar systems are rotating speroids built up of suns and worlds; (4) the visible Universe appears to be a rotating spheroid built up of a Milky Way of stellar systems.

It is possible that this largest spheroid, which we call the Universe, may only be one out of innumerable similar spheroids, rotating at practically infinite distances from each other, and forming a still vaster rotating spheroid.

Irving writes under the heading "Immortality of the Universe" that "we now recognise no beginning and acknowledge no end", something that we would probably want to dispute and replace with a Big Bang and possible Big Crunch. And likewise Irving has no clear conception of Dark Matter as we now understand the term. However, in considering why the night sky is dark (and not lit up by an infinity of stars), Irving notes:

"... unless some cause produces a loss of light, the whole sky will be as bright as the Sun. As this is very far from being the case, ... it is not impossible that light itself may be intercepted by dark bodies in its way to us... "

Irving is always careful not to over-claim; you sense that he is trying to see his way in a fog that he is not sure will lift. As he says at the end of his discussion on "Outside Universes":

These speculations could be extended ad infinitum... It would, however, be a waste of time to consider them seriously, they only serve to show how little we really know of the great "Riddle of the Universe".

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An afternoon of talks, presentations and performance. 

Prompt 1pm start.

Particle astrophysicist and Chair of DMUK, Dr Cham Ghag will talk about what dark matter might be and how scientists are trying to detect it. 

Senior Technician at Boulby Underground Laboratory, Emma Meehan will introduce a video tour of Boulby Underground Laboratory explaining why so much science happens underground. 

Artist Sarah Casey will discuss her involvement in the collaborative project Dark Matters: Thresholds of (Im)perceptibility,  which brought together a theoretical cosmologist, artist and anthropologist  around their shared research interest in the ‘imperceptible’. The project considered the provocations and challenges presented to these respective disciplinary practices, by entities, forces and dimensions that currently (or will always?) exceed human and technological modes of sensing and comprehension; the starting point was the mind-boggling proposition that 95% of our universe is invisible! The talk will include a short documentary film which concisely presents the perspectives of each of the collaborators. Issues arising from the film are then used to reflect upon a number of drawings made in the course of the project, focusing on what it means to see, feel and touch experiences on the edge of our grasp, and how a practice of observational drawing might engage with that matter 13 billion light years away.

Artist Sarah Gillett will present ‘The Case of The Gold Ring’, a performance essay with a looping narrative. It’s about the life of a ring made for her mum in 1998, which itself was made from three older rings. Marriage, boxing, mining, meteorite bombardment, neutron stars - this story of rings, collisions and duality pieces together fragmented knowledge to show us the shape of the whole

Talks are followed by an open panel discussion and Q&A. 

Refreshments will be served.

Free admission.

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Exhibition runs 26th July – 02 September 2017

Monday – Friday 10am – 4pm; Saturday 1pm – 4pm; Closed Sundays

Laboratory of Dark Matters is a response by artists to scientific investigations into the unknown nature of the universe. Through a programme of exhibitions, workshops, talks and events it invites everyone driven by curiosity to explore fundamental questions about matter and consciousness.

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Laboratory of Dark Matters 

In 2016 a group of nine artists visited a scientific research facility 1.1km deep in the ground, where astrophysicists are on the hunt for dark matter. Our visit to the Boulby Underground Laboratory inspired us to continue a creative conversation with the astrophysicists we met as we explored our own ideas about the unknown, invisibility and perception. Eight months later we undertook a residency at Guest Projects in London where we ran workshops for the public, an arts and science symposium, a listening event and an exhibition of our work.

As we take the Laboratory of Dark Matters to the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum and Whitby Museum in summer 2017 we commissioned a short film to introduce our work.

Film by Euan James-Richards

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Sarah Gillett The Case of the Gold Ring 

Performance essay (25 mins) and research mapping wall

The Case of the Gold Ring is about the life of a ring made for my mum in 1998 from three older rings she wanted to keep but didn’t wear. I investigated the story of the rings, their owners, and the history of gold as a precious material, connecting the ring across space and time. Marriage, boxing, mining, meteorite bombardment, neutron stars - the collisions and dualities in the story are surprising.

© Sarah Gillett 2017

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Kate Fahey Dark Adaptation

Digital Video with two channel audio

In ocular physiology, adaptation is the ability of the eye to adjust to various levels of darkness and light. The eye takes approximately 20–30 minutes to fully adapt from bright sunlight to complete darkness and become ten thousand to one million times more sensitive than at full daylight. This is called Dark Adaptation. However, it takes approximately five minutes for the eye to adapt to bright sunlight from darkness. Insufficiency of adaptation most commonly presents as insufficient adaptation to dark environment, called night blindness or nyctalopia.

Live performance in collaboration with uileann piper John Devine and artist Tim Zercie. 

Envisaging the exhibition space at Guest Projects as a type of dark matter laboratory, the audience were encouraged to awake from their sleep and adapt to “seeing” in the “darkness” of the lab. Through the performance of a written text and a sound intervention, a speculative relationship is established between dark matter, dark adaptation, the lectures of Rudolf Steiner on the practice of divining and John Carpenter's film They Live, calling on lost lore and old forms of knowledge to negotiate technology and scientific advancement.

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Daniel Clark

Edge-work, 2017

4’00”, Single channel audio,

FM radios, foil insulation

audio link

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Daniel Clark 

Veil, 2017

Pigment on archival polyester

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