Professor Susan Collins gave a UCL Lunch Hour Lecture about SCEMFA.
How are artists translating or materialising digital works for gallery and physical situations? Professor Collins shows a snapshot of works coming out of the Slade and the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art (SCEMFA) over the past decade that explore the material of the digital. This lecture explores a range of groundbreaking perspectives and manifestations.
The euro has taken a bit of a battering of late – and not just in the financial markets. As you can see for yourself above, the surface of a 1-cent coin, while smooth to the naked eye, is pitted and scarred when viewed through a powerful microscope.
To create this image, artist Martin John Callanan, a fellow at University College London based in the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art, worked with Ken Mingard, Petra Mildeova and Eric Bennett at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory in London. The team used an optical microscope to create images of the lowest-denomination coins used in Australia, Burma, Swaziland and Chile, as well as the transnational euro. They took standard coins that had been in circulation and left the microscope to make 4000 tiny exposures overnight. It then took three days of processing to stitch these images together to create each final, 400-million-pixel version. The zoomable picture above is a low-resolution version.
The coin images are part of an ongoing series called The Fundamental Units in which Callanan explores “the atoms that shape the global economy”. Ultimately, the series will encompass all 166 of the world’s active currencies that use coins. The first five are on display as 1.2-by-1.2-metre prints, along with more of Callanan’s works, at the Galleria Horrach Moyà in Mallorca, Spain, until 17 January 2013.
Physics & Math, Picture of the Day, Science In Society
Sumit Paul-Choudhury, editor, 16:05 4 December 2012
To celebrate 15 years of ground breaking research in electronic media, the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art (SCEMFA) will hold a 14 week exhibition, showing new works from eight internationally acclaimed artists: who use emerging practices to explore electronic and digital media, as both a source and material.
Martin John Callanan, 24 – 30 January
Thomson & Craighead, 2 – 13 February
Tim Head, 15 – 20 February
Simon Faithfull, 22 February – 6 March
Brighid Lowe, 8 – 13 March
Melanie Jackson, 15 – 20 March
Susan Collins, 23 March – 17 April
An exhibition that revolves every fortnight between each artist, acting as a showcase for the best of contemporary art in the UK, and highlighting the Slade’s pivotal role in the history, development and current research in the many varied forms of electronic media.
Tuesday – Friday: 10 am – 5pm, Saturday & Sunday: noon – 5pm
North Lodge, University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT