This week I will be attending the much anticipated reopening of The Kathleen Lonsdale Building (KLB) ceremony, transforming UCL, with a highly energy efficient and environmentally friendly modern conversion. The reopening will be by the prestigious, wonderful Sir David Attenborough. A perfect choice for a building full of history and cutting edge research for the future. I'm sure Attenborough's passion for earth sciences will be in abundance and that too for the research from Chemistry to Cosmology. We may well experience profound insights into the emmence scope of potential this new multi layered hub of facilities will present to us in years to come. The refurbishment will improve the teaching, research and social learning spaces for the Chemistry (including Radio Chemistry & Computational Chemistry), Earth Sciences, Physics and AstroPhysics departments, the Faculty Office and the data centre. A number of specialist laboratories will be re-provided with significantly upgraded facilities, for more information see the full UCL article: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/transforming-ucl/current-projects/klb One of the new hubs is for the 'Cosmoparticle initiative' and last year I had a phone call requesting a commission for the new space. The lady on the phone was Hiranya Peiris from UCL. Peiris had seen 'Infinite LIGO Dreams' a post about the painting via Facebook. I had been commissioned to create 'Infinite LIGO Dreams' by Cardiff School of Physics and Astronomy completed 6 months previously in the summer of 2016. The art work celebrated the discovery of gravitational waves signal detected by LIGO together with the many teams of which, Cardiff School of Physics and Astronomy was a part of. Peiris enquired if I would be able to create an artwork combining different fields in regards to comprehending the universe. I was captivated immediately. The request was to combine research data regarding, in summary, the Cosmic Microwave Background, Dark Matter, Particle Physics, the evolution from the Big Bang to now and everything else in between. I have to admit I love it when at the moment of knowledge, the mind boggles and I feel discombobulated at such a fantastic set of parameters for a brief which is in part is a pre-supposition for the discovery of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles WIMPS yet to come by the Large Underground Xenon experiment LUX. As an Artsci Creator I am transformed into the actualisation of the information being presented by the collaborators; Hiranya Peiris, Andrew Pontzen and Ghag Chamkaur. Words become visualisation and emotions; the complex evolution of the universe and all its diversity giving way to new insights through prisms of simplicity offered by the physicists. It is as if drapes of calico veils have been lifted before the shadows, allowing rays light to beam into new perspectives. For 5 months I immersed by myself into the meaning behind the research; the way I felt meditating upon an accelerating exspanding universe, is exhilarating, in which I exist central to the now, larger than yesterday and smaller than tomorrow, relative in locality to all around, it does indeed, befuddle me. The arrow of time, piercing my awed mind. Here is a video recording the experience creating 'COSMOPARTICLE' interlaced with visual data provided by the collaborators. Art is a brilliant tool to express that which is awesome in our comprehension of the nature of existance.
My experiences of the process creating these works is an absolute indulgence, I love it, especially being immersed in 'matter', in this case oil paints, brush and canvas for the brief requested. I feel as if I am a strange cathode for such a curious enquiry. My cognition is a quanta of comprehension in comparison to the exquisite minds that look upon the COSMOPARTICLE and I am humbled deeply by the physicists and astronomical research taking place. A tour will take place at somepoint and I will be standing by the COSMOPARTICLE painting in the Cosmoparticle Hub ready to meet Sir David Attenborough and all that follow. I am of course a little nervous to be meeting one of the most inspiring men of the 20th and 21st century. A father figure to us all, for our planet and all of it's incredible creatures and creations. With beautiful documentation of our planet and tireless persuasion he has given us insight into our destruction, with tempered words he has discribed the urgency to change our ways and be kinder to our world. Now more than ever we must look to the future with adaption in mind to study nature, science and create techonolgies and solutions. We are at a tipping point, we have been warned, its time to take heed to every nuance and change our ways.
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