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.
“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
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.
Robert Irwin, Notes towards a Conditional Art, (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011), 81.
Juhani Pallasmaa, “Towards a Neuroscience of Architecture,” in Architecture and Neuroscience, ed. Philip Tidwell, (Finland: Tapio Wirkkala, 2013), 12-13.
Irwin, Notes towards a Conditional Art, 73.
Harry Francis Mallgrave, “Should Architects care about Neuroscience?” in Architecture and Neuroscience, ed. Philip Tidwell (Finland: Tapio Wirkkala, 2013), 34.
Ibid.
Ibid, 36.
“What are Gravitational Waves,” LIGO, date accessed, 25.09.18. https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/what-are-gw?highlight=gravitational%20waves
“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/
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory
Juhani Pallasmaa, The eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, (United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons, 2012), 41.