Fiona Crisp

Boulby/Hubble from Material Sight 2018/2023 

HD Video with sound 31’ 

The moving image work, Boulby/Hubble, is one of four films that formed part of the installation Material Sight 2018. The film moves from footage of a truck travelling through tunnels deep underneath the bed of the North Sea to a fly-through animation of the famous NASA ‘Deep Field’ image made by the Hubble Telescope – an image that, at the time it was made, was the deepest view into the history of the universe. The animation, made by the Institute of Computational Cosmology at Durham University, travels back through time and space toward the moment of the big bang and is edited together with a sonification of the Earth’s magnetic field produced by the European Space Agency.  

Fiona’s Material Sight project attempted to address the problem that many areas of contemporary science, including cosmology, particle physics and astrophysics, operate at scales and levels of complexity that lie beyond the imaginative and cognitive understanding of non-scientists. She approached this dilemma through the use of still and moving imagery to place us in a bodily relation to the physical spaces and laboratories where fundamental science is performed. Within these sites, she explored the possibility of a ‘sensorium’ for fundamental science, using photography, film and sound to embody the spaces of experimental science and present them back to scientists and non-scientists alike as sites of material encounter. 

In partnership with Arts Catalyst, Institute of Computational Cosmology, Durham University, European Space Agency, Leverhulme Trust, Arts Council England and Science and Technology Facilities Council, Matt’s Gallery, London. 

Fiona Crisp is Professor of Contemporary Art at Northumbria University, where she co-leads CNoS. Her practice resides at the intersection of photography, sculpture and architecture and for the past two decades she has been collaborating with sites, institutions and individuals in the field of fundamental science. Her Leverhulme Fellowship Material Sight was based at three world-leading research facilities, including Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, housed inside a mountain in central Italy. Material Sight culminated in two major exhibitions and a book publication, edited with Nicola Triscott, The Live Creature and Ethereal Things: Physics in Culture - a collection of texts, images and conversations that present fundamental physics and the physics of the universe as human activities and cultural endeavours.