A new tidal collaboration with Dr Susi Arnott. This time we’re working with Prof. Sofia Olhede as part of UCL’s Creative Reactions science-art project.
Two time-lapse cameras (Bobby and Stillman), each accompanied by a stereo sound recorder, eye each-other as the tide rises around them close to London Bridge. Together they create a dialogue between a fixed vantage point and an erratic floating viewpoint.
Each camera shot 18,843 images during a 12-hour tidal cycle. One photo was taken every two seconds. The two attached sound recorders produced a total of almost 20 hours of continuous audio. All this constituted our ‘data’.
Many art-science projects assume that the artists will produce a subjective ‘creative’ response to the scientists’ objective research. There is an assumption here that scientific work is not creative, or interpretative. We hope to upend this, or at least level the creative playing field. Both scientific statistician Prof. Olhede and ourselves will find ways to respond to our data and present it in different ways.
Currently we have edited two synchronised 37 minute time-lapse films: one looking at the water, the other immersed in the water, each camera looking at the other. But how do we reconcile the sampling of the visual scene every two seconds by the cameras, with the continuous audio? Future posts will explore this issue.
Prof. Olhede is a statistical scientist; amongst other sources, she’s worked with oceanographers on data from ocean research buoys. She and her colleagues are working on a creative response, as scientists; and this is to our raw data, rather than to our completed time-lapse films.
The two sets of interpretations will be projected alongside each other at the Creative Reactions show – Bar Juju in Brick Lane 15-18th May.
UCL Science Library, Malet Place, London WC1E 6BT 020 7679 7795
