Eight

E i g h t

Pascale Bardos, Eight, 2018, digital moving image projection, paint, space, 35:28

In the town I was born and raised, Byron Bay, during winter when there is rarely a cloud in sight, the crisp clear sky amplifies colours that embodies one in awe. Every day for a week, during the periods of dawn and dusk, I stationed myself at the most easterly point of Australia. I positioned four cameras respectively in the directions of north, south, east and west and embarked upon a durational investigation observing the transition of light in the sky.  I would press record on the cameras, sit back, observe and orientate myself to the moment, becoming attuned to the planetary cycle of the Earth. My perceptions anchored in those present moments reinforced my experiential understanding of the heliocentric cycle of the Earth revolving around the sun.

The transcendent experience and countless hours of film all distilled into eight minutes of footage from one moment at dawn, from the camera positioned towards the east while the sun set in the west. The footage shows a pivotal moment when the sky transitions into gradients of an immersive spectrum of shifting colours. It was the most captivating period I was experiencing, a delicate and poignant moment when day falls into night. The eight minutes of film fluxes into a continual loop, the rippling and transitional state of the sky flows repetitively forwards and backwards. The footage captures colour fields and fragile transitions of hues. Blue to pink, lilac to gold. The video is recognised to be the sky though becomes ambiguous as the moving image turns into a field of colour without a focal point. For one brief moment in the selected footage, three birds fly across the scene. They instil an anchoring point that allows a reorientation back to scale, time and place.  

I positioned myself on top of the cape under the lighthouse. The lighthouse has two beams on opposite sides; the cyclical rotation illuminates both the land and the ocean simultaneously. The lighthouse stands at the union between the two and spreads light upon them both, calling upon wonderers to orientate themselves to the light. The waves of light from the lighthouse are captured in the work ‘Eight.’ The brushing of light activates the camera to readjust, which forms a rhythmic pulse in the film that captures the progression of time. 

The camera lens is consistently adjusting to the transition of light and struggles to focus without a focal point. The technology surrenders to the transition, as it finds focus upon the clear sky. Similarly, we are consistently changing and adjusting to our environment as well as to our presupposed conditions of perception. Our position within and from the Earth comes back into focus. The cameras actions mirror our own readjustments of perception and orientation to the present, as we are consistently adapting and adjusting to our surroundings and additional collective sedimentations of knowledge.

Viewing the sky is a worldwide collective experience that is familiar and ever present in our lives. It forms an individual encounter that connects us to the collective experience of terrestrial life. I documented countless hours of skyscapes and by filming in all four directions, a 360° peripheral view of a singular moment was able to be sutured together. The expanded view, transposed into a retracted moment. 

The work intends to alter the innate interaction of sunlight from an exterior encounter to an interior contemplation of being in and from the world. The work evokes a subconscious alternate perspective; as the viewer is unaware of perceiving the opposing sky, they continue to subconsciously mirror the colours that exist from the causal effect of the sun’s light. The projector becomes the source of light that projects an image of the opposing sky of the sunset onto the opposite side of the room. 

‘Eight’ is a product of an investigation into origin that documents the sky as the perceptual ends of visual experience. The piece was filmed at my birthplace alongside my mother, my point of origin. The work is a spatial encounter that is activated by a projection of light into space, a casting of footage upon a surface of the wall that mirrors onto the floor. The large-scale projection is framed by the wall, creating a portal to extrinsic and intrinsic being. The encounter of light embodies multiple spatial and temporal notions that fuse together through the experience of the work: The spatial environment (gallery), one’s internal space (mind) and the space of the external world (sky). These three spaces unite as a phenomenology of becoming. 

The work is an experiential encounter of light in space that mimics the elemental rhythm of the world. The viewer experiencing the work cognitively mirrors what they perceive. We the audience are mirroring the sky, mirroring the transition of light, and consequently embodying space. Selecting eight minutes of footage was an intuitive decision, further research revealed that it takes eight minutes and twenty seconds for sunlight to reach Earth. The light that illuminates our day is light from the past. ‘Eight’ mirrors this notion by capturing light from the past to illuminate the present. 

“[T]hrough the brilliance of an image, the distant past resounds with echoes, and it is hard to know at what depth these echoes will reverberate and die away.” Our brain cognitively perceives and mirrors our surroundings emotionally and physically. This contemplation has brought my attention to the responsibility embedded in creating work and the inherent impacts upon the viewer as a perceptual and experiential event. The cause and effect of my actions and the potential repercussions from encounters with art is at the forefront of my practice. The gentle transitional pace and delicate colours of ‘Eight’ were expressed with the intention of stimulating a stillness and refuge, both in the physical environment and mental space. The skies field of colour, mirrored in one’s mind, reflects a clear abyss that speaks of internal and external infinities. The ebb and flow of the footage works to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which holds a soothing and calming effect through the ancestral memory of being in the womb in a rocking body of fluid. The light inhaling and exhaling evokes the observer to breathe which holds a moment to connect with the presence of space.

Eclipse

E c l i p s e

Pascale Bardos, Celestial Sphere No.01, digital image, dimensions variable

“Our bodies and movements are in constant interaction with the environment; the world and the self inform and redefine each other constantly. The percept of the body and the image of the world turn into one single continuous existential experience; there is no body separate from its domicile in space, and there is no space unrelated to the unconscious image of the perceiving self.”(1)

The fusion of my research and work are inseparable and entangle together to form the poetic imagery that make up my practice. Notions of expansion and retraction are constantly symbiotically becoming through my exploration of theoretical and empirical research that subsequently informs my existence and therefore my practice. My work captures a collective experience of viewing the sky and holds universal understanding that echoes through collective and individual memory. 

During the week I filmed the footage used for ‘Eight,’ there was a blood moon eclipse. The astronomical event encapsulated my conceptual contemplations into a singular moment of space and time. Early in the morning before the sun rose, the dark pre-dawn sky was illuminated by a red glow. A blood moon occurs when the light from the Sun passes through Earth’s atmosphere, which bends and turns the light into a deep red. The light falls onto the surface of the Moon as it passes through Earth’s shadow. The causal effect of the planetary alignment transposes a red light that illuminates the moon. Simultaneously, you are able to see both the sunrise and sunset from Earth captured upon the surface of the Moon.(2)

Perry Vlahos, President of the Astronomical Society of Victoria, describes that “What it actually shows is the solar system in action, and it gives you a bit of a better perspective of your own place in the scheme of things, in the universe.”(3) The expanding observations of a celestial body retract into a contemplation of self. 

The eclipse added multiple layers of transition and time as I became aware of the causal effects of Earth’s position in space while watching the passing red shadow of Earth’s atmosphere upon the moon. This stimulated a mirrored understanding to perceive beyond and to view within. The experience held perceptive reflections of scale, distance and duration. Notions mirrored consciously and subconsciously in sight and within the mind.

The continuous revolution of our planet and moon that motion around the vital force of the omnipotent sun, has been observed by our ancestors and has been a historical reflection of the conscious self that orientates us to the terrestrial world. This astronomical event was something that we collectively experienced while sharing the encounter with our ancestors. The eclipse came and passed, I bathed in the aftermath of the planetary transition as the sun rose above the horizon. The warmth of the morning light filled my mind with reflections of our ancestral past, a shared conscious experience that transcends through space and time. 

To view the sky is a worldwide collective experience that is familiar and ever present in our lives. The sky is seen through the individual eye, which connects us to an experience perceived by all humankind. An individual encounter that connects us to a collective experience of terrestrial life. This event encapsulated the fusion of my practice of scientific logic and empirical encounters and stimulated the notions of expansion and retraction as a union held in a transitional moment. The eclipse was witnessed by millions of people around the world, a planetary experience. Multiple people connected through the event of the eclipse and the embodied experience of planetary cycles. We were collectively held in a moment, connected to the same moment of time and space.

1. Juhani Pallasmaa, “Towards a Neuroscience of Architecture,” in Architecture and Neuroscience, ed. Philip Tidwell, (Finland: Tapio Wirkkala, 2013), 12.

2. Luna eclipse: Blood moon appears in longest such event of the 21st Century,” ABC News, last modified July 28, 2018, accessed September 20, 2018. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-28/centurys-longest-lunar-eclipse-creates-red-moon/10045472

3.  “Luna eclipse: Blood moon appears in longest such event of the 21st Century,” ABC News, last modified July 28, 2018. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-28/centurys-longest-lunar-eclipse-creates-red-moon/10045472

Expansion and Retraction

E x p a n s i o n   a n d   R e t r a c t i o n

Pascale Bardos, Celestial Sphere No.02, digital image, dimensions variable

Art heightens the awareness of the inseparable connectivity between self and the world that transcends beyond a conceptualised and intellectualised rational existence, into a phenomenological presence of being. The complementarities(1) of my research and work entangle and form a self-reliant existence that is perpetually evolving. Scientific understandings are embodied in my work and concurrently inform how I perceive the world. This provides me with a deepening connection to the Earth and the present moment. It generates an interaction that syncs me to the planetary cycle, which in reciprocity folds back into my work, creating a sensuous empirical encounter for the viewer. 

A question I pose and a driving force of my practice is how notions of expansion and retraction(2) form a symbiotic becoming, to exist in one moment, as an entity or unity. As the spatial artist Robert Irwin states, “While a perspective deriving from our root in the world is gained by a centripetal process, our place in the cultural world is gained by a centrifugal one.”(3) I venture to explore how centripetal and centrifugal forces assimilate to create a unified perceptive experience and how the human body acts as the horizon between these two forces. I’ve been exploring these ideas through temporal space; the internal space of the mind, the space of the immediate environment and the external space of the universe. 

I initially explored the space of the mind and came to question the premise of origin. The origin of human abstractions and the conditioning that has moulded the way we exist today. Biologically, an ancestral past is held within our bodies. The pink segments in the corners of our eyes originate from when we were lizards and blinked horizontally. Our coccyx bone is a remnant from when we were tree dwelling and had tails while our lungs are adapted gills from our fish past and ocean life. Equally, we hold an ancestral past in our mind. Our cognitive abstractions along with the social and cultural conditions throughout history are not only consciously navigated but also physically embedded in our brain matter.(4)

Our perception and imagination are created through the same cognitive activity in our brain. The only thing that differentiates them is the cultural collective agreements of reality. Robert Irwin expresses, “For orderly practice our adaptive mind is culturally induced/conditioned to hold a uniform picture of reality… [W]hile our imaginative mind is capable of presenting us with a variety of realities.”(5) We are a product of preconceived, presupposed ideas influenced continuously by the developing creation of the individual layered on top. These sedimentations form the constituents of human perception through a neurological and metaphysical viewpoint. 

We are consistently mimicking our environment through the cognitive activity of mirror neurons. When I watch someone cross their arms, I am cognitively replicating that action. The gestural mirroring goes beyond sight, encompassing a multifaceted sensorial response. The neural process surpasses the interrelationships with other humans as the same response is implicated when perceiving inanimate objects.(6) I see a coffee cup on a table and mirror the sensation physically and emotionally. These new discoveries are now being unpacked, sedimenting on top of preexisting abstractions of perception. My query surfaced as an exploration into research that proves that we also mirror our external world beyond the object and do so in an empathetic manner.(7)

We are progressively unpacking and adding to our understanding of human consciousness. New knowledge such as the discovery that our minds consciously mirror our environment, lays the foundation of the premise that we also mirror universal laws. (8) The query arises, does the continuous expansion of our minds, mirror the expansion of the universe. These contemplations invigorate and solidify the direction of my practice through navigations of the internal infinities of consciousness.

Exploring expansive notions of the space of the universe, lead to a study of gravitational waves, which are ripples in space created by a major astronomical occurrence.(9) The exploration of gravitational waves is generating the development of a new system of measurement that will continue to settle as another layer of sediment on top of the preconditioned forms of measurement that inform the way we currently exist in the world as well as how we perceive the universe. Albert Einstein developed the theory of gravitational waves in 1916. The concept was an extension of his discovery of general relativity, which explains that gravity comes from warps and curves in the fabric of space. Fundamentally, the fabric of space can be seen like a trampoline. When you place a weight on top of it, such as the sun, the material will concave and concurrently pull whatever is near the weight into a gravitational orbit around the valley of the curved fabric. (10)

To continue with this same analogy, if children were to jump on the surface of the trampoline, ripples would be sent through the material. It was proposed that this would also cause a ripple in the fabric of space. Scientists proved Einstein’s theory in 2015, confirming that gravitational waves do exist and in terms of the predictions above, the fabric of space would ripple from the vibrations. The discovery of gravitational waves is so recent that it is still unfathomable to conceive the effects it will have on the future development of human existence. When reflecting upon the revolutionary discovery of radio waves that lead to the invention of mobile phones and the Internet, we can start to surmise the breadth of the possible effects.

1.3 billion years ago, two black holes collided. Mass impact occurred. One black hole had the mass equivalent of 29 stars while the other was the mass of 36 stars. They whirled around each other 100 times per second before colliding. Two years ago, the gravitational waves caused by this collision reached Earth. Reverberating for 1.3 billion years, the rippling of this past occurrence intersected Earth in the present. A union of expansion into a retracted moment occurred. These ripples were documented by LIGO.(11) The ripple effect was made possible to experience through a new abstraction of measurement as gravitational waves are so minute they can’t be recorded into light or by an image. The only way they can be translated into data is by applying the vibrational impact to sound waves. This proposes a new way of navigating the universe and the invisible, allowing investigations into unchartered territories such as black holes.

Gravitational waves are reverberations of the past, with consequences from occurrences that happened billions of years ago. Statically, silently and intimately absorbed, a vibration of a wave measuring less than a single atomic unit. This insignificant measurement is one of the most significant discoveries of humankind that shapes our potential of perceiving from now on. We are at the forefront of a monumental shift, as alternate modes of measurement evolve beyond what we currently perceive through sight. While the light spectrum is what we have relied upon for centuries, perpetuating the hegemony of the sense of sight, the gravitational wave provides a new spectrum of perception. A void of blackness that light can’t escape from, which humans have no instrument to measure, can now be explored through vibration and reverberation. Discovering the unseen, with a phenomenon that can’t be seen.

This new way of perceiving transcends our ocular-centric society, discards our perceptual conditioned agreements and makes way for a movement towards new conceptions of knowledge. The application of a new form of measurement applied to gravitational waves, guided my enquiry into a potential human experience that has advanced into a state of multisensory perception of the world where other senses are awakened to form an embodied presence.(12) A shift in orientation with the present moment would result, where perceptual and experiential progression can be cultivated. These investigations grounded me to the now, to a present moment that reveals questions of my own origin that formulate my existence and perception of the world.

1. “Complementarity is a relationship or situation in which two or more different things improve or emphasise each other’s sense of a whole.” “Complementarity,” Oxford Dictionary, date accessed 30.04.18. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/complementarity

2. I consciously use the words expansion and retraction as they allude to movement, motion and a continuum; opposed to internal and external that I perceive more as defined, static and solid. I also use retraction opposed to contraction, as contraction is defined as moving toward a center or an end point where retraction is infinite alike to expansion.

3. Robert Irwin, Notes towards a Conditional Art, (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011), 81.

4. Juhani Pallasmaa, “Towards a Neuroscience of Architecture,” in Architecture and Neuroscience, ed. Philip Tidwell, (Finland: Tapio Wirkkala, 2013), 12-13.

5. Irwin, Notes towards a Conditional Art, 73.

6. Harry Francis Mallgrave, “Should Architects care about Neuroscience?” in Architecture and Neuroscience, ed. Philip Tidwell (Finland: Tapio Wirkkala, 2013), 34.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid, 36.

9. “What are Gravitational Waves,” LIGO, date accessed, 25.09.18. https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/what-are-gw?highlight=gravitational%20waves

10. “The Detection of Gravitational Waves Was a Scientific Breakthrough, but What’s Next?” Brian Greene, The Smithsonian Magazine, last modified, April 20, 2016. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/detection-gravitational-waves-breakthrough-whats-next-180958511/

11. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory

12. Juhani Pallasmaa, The eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, (United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons, 2012), 41.

The sky formed my practice

T h e S k y F o r m e d M y P r a c t i c e

Pascale Bardos, Celestial Sphere No.03, digital image, dimensions variable

A memory that echoes through my existence is of a moment with my sister lying down in our backyard gazing up into the night’s sky. She was ten and I was five. She told me, “Did you know that stars are suns, and every single star you see has their own solar system.” This was the first time my perception reached beyond my own body, this moment ignited a spark of wonder and flamed a curiosity of existence with a desire to know more.

My practice explores the entanglements of the notions of expansion and retraction and navigates the synergies of union between these motions. I have come to contemplate the universe in the terms of expansion and the internal consciousness in terms of retraction. My research travels in both directions, entering wormholes that lead back to a perceptual awareness of the present while forming methods to comprehend existence. 

Pondering that the opposite of the universe would be a point, locality or an intimacy, lead me to contemplate the universe in terms of expansion and the opposite to this being a retraction of internal consciousness. I came to query where the transitions of opposing motions intersect and combine. The contemplation was resolved when I peered into the horizon and viewed the sky meeting the sea. This union of space evoked a realisation that is the body that forms the horizon between these internal and external infinities. 

My research explores external notions through the fields of astrophysics and cosmology. While an internal enquiry of the conscious mind is investigated through an exploration in the fields of evolutionary biology, neuroscience and phenomenology. My practice is formed through my theoretical and empirical research. With the reverberations of these explorations, I distill poignant moments that form my conceptual and material practice.

Élan Vital

É l a n V i t a l

Pascale Bardos, Élan vital, 2018, C-type photograthic prints, 60 x 84cm

I’m interested in the slippages between scientific rationale and poetic logic, using a phenomenological framework to observe my reception of information, and how that translates into my work. While studying ‘The Poetics of Space’ (1958), by Gaston Bachelard, philosopher of poetics, I found myself deeply intrigued by his reference to reverberation and perception as intuition and memory that combine through echoes and shape how we perceive our present. I researched his references to Eugène Minkowski, phenomenologist, who follows philosopher Henri Bergson’s notion of ‘élan vital.’ 

 “‘Élan vital:’ the vital force or impulse of life; especially: a creative principle held by Bergson to be immanent in all organisms and responsible for evolution.”(1)

Bergson saw a ‘vital force’ as a creative impulse within an organism that is accountable for change and adaptation through the progression of humanity. In his book ‘Creative Evolution’ (1907), he navigates the philosophy of process with reflection on biology at the forefront of his thoughts. Bergson recognised evolution as a scientific fact and through his examination of existence, he established the importance of duration, being the unique qualitative essence of life. Bergson “…proposed that the whole evolutionary process should be seen as the endurance of an ‘élan vital’ (“vital impulse”), that is continually developing and generating new forms. Evolution, in short, is creative, not mechanistic.”(2)

Bergson uses notions of duration to conceive a perception of consciousness, as “duration is incomplete and continuously, not beginning or ending but intermingling.”(3) He explains consciousness in reference to duration as being an outward progression through one’s life, and an inward accumulation of memory that echoes through one’s existence to form perception. An innate momentum of the vital force shaped by the experiential resonance of memory through one’s trajectory. “Bergson defines the immediate data of consciousness as being temporal, in other words, as the duration.”(4)

The ‘élan vital’ is a sustained note that passes through time, transforms and gives shape to life through an evolutionary duration. The deep resonance of the ‘vital force’ is embedded into our beings and reverberates into an infinite continuum. The vital force is embedded within me as a living human being, and is strengthened by perceptive existential experience. 

Eugène Minkowski was inspired by Bergson’s notion of ‘élan vital’ as the dynamic origin of human life, in which without, we would be stagnant and non-evolving.(5) Minkowski evolved the concept of this vital force as an elemental momentum that aligns us to the essence of existence that is participatory, and continually evolving through time and space. In Minkowski’s book ‘Towards a Cosmology,’ (1999) he speaks to the vital force as a ‘retentir’ (reverberation), and uses auditive metaphors, “for in sound both time and space are epitomized,”(6) to further articulate the true nature of resonate existence. 

Minkowski writes, “If, having fixed the original form in our mind’s eye, we ask ourselves how that form comes alive and fills with life, we discover a new dynamic and vital category, a new property of the universe: reverberation (retentir).”(7) He further explains the sonority of life as a poetic image within our mind, activated by auditive words such as well-spring, horns, waves, and echoes where upon reception, our mind attunes to the reverberations of the soundwaves held in a word that “belongs to the material and palpable world.”(8) 

Minkowski proposes that the vital force of life, the reverberation of existence, isn’t derived from the material or palpable world that activates a resonance of life. He believes it is independent of any instrument. He expresses that when we attune ourselves to our innate vital force, we ignite an internal sonority that sends penetrating waves into our existence. This interpretation is aligned with the audible sensory meaning, where sonorous is “…harmonious, resonant, melodic, and capable of determining the whole tonality of life.”(9) When we orientate ourselves to our innate reverberations, we heighten an immanent depth of being. He explains, “…here to ‘fill up’ and ‘plenitude,’ will have a completely different sense. It is not a material object, which fills another by espousing the form that the other imposes. No, it is the dynamism of the sonorous life itself, which by engulfing and appropriating everything, it finds in its path, fills the slice of paper, or better, the slice of the world that it assigns itself by its movement, making it reverberate, breathing into it its own life.”(10) 

Bachelard references Minkowski’s notions of reverberation throughout his book “Poetics of Space.” He explores the phenomenological enquiry in the encounter of art, and whether the experience is inherently within us or within the work. He expresses, “…a phenomenological inquiry on poetry… must go beyond the sentimental resonance with which we receive a work of art. This is where the phenomenological doublet of resonances and repercussions must be sensitized. The resonances are dispersed on the different planes of our life in the world, while the repercussions invite us to give greater depth to our own existence. In resonance we hear the poem, in the reverberations we speak it, it is our own.”(11) The resonance of my research reverberates into my being and into my work, while the reverberations encapsulated in the work, unify the multiplicities of the resonance in the research. This in turn resonates within the experience of the viewer, enmeshing the reverberation of an individual experience into a collective encounter.  

The Sun has been a vital force that has perpetuated endless scientific discoveries and subsequently expanded human consciousness. Investigations that predate Bergson, which act as anticipations of his work, can be seen in the principles developed by philosopher Posidonius who proposed that the sun emanated a "vital force" to all living beings on Earth.(12) Posidonius also endeavored to determine the distance between the sun and Earth. While his calculation was half the true distance, in measuring the size of the sun, however, he reached more accurate figures than those proposed by other Greek astronomers, including Aristarchus of Samos. His work is a reflection on the evolution of knowledge and conscious thought, which placed essential foundations for the transition of a geocentric perception of the universe into a heliocentric existence. This proposition was clarified by Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century, who created a geometric mathematical model of a heliocentric system with the sun at the centre of the universe that the Earth, planets and other stars revolved around. This laid way for Newton’s discovery of gravity that gave way to Einstein’s theory of general relativity (mass causing space-time to curve), and to further predict gravitational waves that were proven 100 years later in 2015 at LIGO.(13)  

The consequence of acquired knowledge trickles through human consciousness to provoke further contemplations into further discoveries. In 1653, astronomer Christiaan Huygens calculated the distance from Earth to the sun as 149.6 million km. This advancement of measurement could then produce evidence for the time it takes for light to reach Earth. 8 minutes on average, as the Earth revolves on an elliptical rotation. The distance from the Sun to Earth forms the perfect conditions to produce and sustain the vital force. 

We are consistently constructing the past as much as the past constructs us. How we orientate ourselves mentally and physically, constructs how we perceive and receive. This constant interaction of body and world forms a reciprocal reality. We equally create the world through our perception as much as the world is informing our sense of perception.  The perceptual interactivity of self and world enmeshes the ‘flesh’ of the world with one’s own as our environment continually alters our brain, which in turn redefines our behavior.

1.  “Élan Vital,” Merriam-Webster, date accessed 30.9.18. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%C3%A9lan%20vital

2.  “Henri Bergson,” Encyclopedia Britannica, date accessed 25.09.18. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henri-Bergson#ref202559

3. “Henri Bergson and the Perception of Time,” John-Francis Phipps, date accessed, 25.09.18. https://philosophynow.org/issues/48/Henri_Bergson_and_the_Perception_of_Time

4.  “Henri Bergson,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last modified March 21, 2016. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/

5.  Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), xvi.

6. ibid.

7. ibid.

8. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, xvii

9. ibid.

10. ibid.

11. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, xxii

12.  Eric Berne, A Layman’s Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 98-9.

13. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory

Skylight

S k y l i g h t

Pascale Bardos, Skylight, 2018, digital moving image projection, 25:00

A poetic image is a construct formed from the echoes of memories that act to cultivate new realisations. My intention is to create work that poetically encompasses my research and harnesses the capacity to share this information through a sensorial embodiment of space, stimulating both inner and outer perceptions that heighten experiences of phenomena. 

‘Skylight’ endeavors to explore figurative movements between expansive and retractive states, through the perceivable shifts of day transitioning into night. Pointing a camera above the horizon line of the ocean, the frame only capturing the sky, I video documented twilight. I filmed the atmosphere for an hour as light blue tones drifted into navy blacks. I doubled the speed of the film so when projected, a heightened sensation of transition was palpable within the experiential environment. I produced two videos, one portraying time moving in a forward motion, showing the day to night transition while the other in reverse, mirroring the change from dark to light emulating the night to day transition of dawn. The videos were then played forward and in reverse, creating a continuously looping cycle. 

The two videos are projected vertically, side by side in the corner of a room, the light spanning from the floor to the ceiling of the gallery space. Meeting in the corner, the projections kiss one another along their horizon line. At one point in the cycle of the loop the two videos portray the same colour, becoming one unified projection and then transition apart. The flux of colour and light with these fleeting moments of union, speaks to how within the motion of expansion and retraction, times of synchronisation can occur. 

The shifting blue hues slowly transition and are only apparent when time is spent within the space. Being absorbed by the colour, a cognitive mirroring orientates the viewer with the light projections. The work intends to provide a platform for individual experience through new perceptual encounters. The encounter in the space repositions the audience’s collective experience of the perception of our atmosphere and the phenomena of Earth’s heliocentric cycle.  The corner becomes a portal, offering an opportunity to enter and be submerged in the transitional space, providing conditions that foster reflection and contemplation. The ambience of light evokes a sense of being that fuses collective logic and individual perception into a singular encounter. 

Sonorous

S o n o r o u s

Pascale Bardos, Sonorous, 2018, C-type photographic prints, rag paper, 96 x 127cm.

“A poetic understanding takes place through unconscious identification, simulation, and internalization. While rational understanding calls for a critical distance and separation from the subject, poetic “understanding” requires nearness and empathy. In fact, art is not about understanding at all, as an artistic image is an existential encounter which momentarily re-orients our entire sense of being.”(1)

Exploring conceptual contemplations of capturing light, I investigated catching light through photography and began to experiment with photolithography. This exploration led to a tangible experience of light through a bodily conversation. Physically handling and interacting with the exposure of light onto lithographic plates, I came to grasp the properties of light on a tangible scale and onto a two-dimensional plane. This investigation informed my understanding of light when it’s suffused into a three-dimensional space. From manually manipulating the exposure on the plates, I continued the printmaking process, transferring captured light into a pigment relief. I came to contemplate the causal affect of light when transfused onto a surface and how light can be experienced when emitted through pigment on paper.

‘Sonorous’ is an observational investigation of the sky over an extended period of time. The three prints document a visual representation of the transition of time, depicted through shifting colours and gradations. In this way, colour is used as a measurement of time. Taken minutes apart, the colour gradients of the images have subtle differences and at first glance appear to be similar if not the same. The variances are revealed when moving around the space as the still image is activated by the movement of the body. This provides a platform for shifting perceptual interactions. From a distance, the prints act as windows, portals into the world as well as into a continued space beyond the wall. A shift occurs when the viewer moves closer to the prints as the pixels and technology behind the image are exposed, providing a window into the notions of documentation and the chosen mode of measurement. Attention is brought to the lens of perception and the presence of the framework that composes the human experience of the world along with the individual empirical encounter that is supplanted on top. The transition of light perceived by the eye as well as the digital lens, both validate reality.

1. Juhani Pallasmaa, “Towards a Neuroscience of Architecture,” in Architecture and Neuroscience, ed. Philip Tidwell, (Finland: Tapio Wirkkala, 2013), 12.

Twenty three

T w e n t y t h r e e

Pascale Bardos, Twenty three, 2016, glass mirror, curved ply, digital moving image, projection, fabric.

Twenty three evokes a congruence between scientific logic and individual experience, validating both as equal forms of reality. The installation explores the repercussions of action through an investigation of natural phenomena. According to the giant impact theory 4.5 billion years ago Theia, a planetoid the size of Mars collided with Earth throwing rock, gas and debris into space. Earth’s gravity consolidated these particles in which formed the Moon. The immense impact of this collision titled Earth on a 23.5 degree axis, which still remains the axis of its rotation today. This impact consequently continues to influence our existence, evidently how we experience the transition of light and tides. 

Twenty three stimulates an experience of space and time that draws upon contemplations of the interconnectivity of moments and matter.  The wall is curved on twenty-three degrees representing the axis in which we exist. A video is projected onto an angled double-sided mirror and then reflected back onto the arced wall, mirroring the effects of the repercussions of both natural events as well as individual actions. The footage displays rippling currents on the surface of the ocean, expressing the inherent effect of the moon upon the Earth through the transition of tides and as a source of light. 

A transition of light is harnessed in the space by delicate white fabric covering the length of a wall with large windows. Passing of time becomes evident throughout the day, in the morning the suns soothing light captivates the space, consequently making the projection faint. As the sun begins to set, the luminosity of the projection grows and becomes the focal source of light. An eclipse of light passing past the mirror illuminates the floor emulating an experience of the moon.

The installation embodies ideas of expansion and retraction as the work speaks of infinity and of phenomenon. Whilst reflecting upon the immediate environment and self the parameters of space, time and matter transcend through the experience of the continuum accentuated within the work.