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TRANSPOSITIONS

This research project was funded by Arts Council England; Institute of Interdisciplinary Art, University of Bath; Plymouth University; European Society of Pigment Cell Research and was exhibited in three elements. It takes as its premise that contemporary scientific practices and methods screen out anomalies and variation, therefore promoting an arid ‘idealisation’ that is dissociated from, and an abstraction of, the ‘real’. One such example is the scientific process of transcription – the means by which data becomes first data and then hard fact. (Latour, B. 1979) In response, Robinson introduced artistic strategies and methods into scientific settings that were grounded in the notion of ‘transposing’. The intention was to produce artwork that played on ‘the positivity of difference as a specific theme of its own’ (Braidotti, R., 2006, p.5).

Transpositions is an installation of three artworks generated through collaboration with scientists, artists and technologists. A rich interdisciplinary process also underpinned the publication Transpositions: this features four essays from a scientist, literary theorist, curator and philosopher. Each contributor had access to work in progress, Robinson’s working notes, and further exchange took place as the essays developed. Research was supported by a guest fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, a residency with biologists in the Kelsh Laboratory, Bath, and a residency with MBERC (within the Marine Institute, Plymouth).

The three artworks are: 1) Laboratory Humans: transposition (through reversal) of the observer/observed viewpoint standard within the scientific method, 2) Data Unveiling: manifestation of scientific data into aesthetic form, 3) Transpositions: bio-imagery transposed into gallery context; the re-presentation is based on using artistic methods stemming from surrealism to reveal a hidden and unstable ‘underside’ of science.