Image © Julian Lass 2011
Madi Boyd is a London-based artist whose sculpture ‘The Point of Perception’ is a collaboration with neuroscientists to explore the limits of human sight. I saw the piece at Kinetica 2011, London, last week and that’s where the above photo’s from.
To view the sculpture, you enter a dark room through a black curtain, but the far wall is brightly lit. A three-dimensional grid made of criss-crossing threads recedes into this wall, lit from behind. The recess is lined with mirrored material, so it’s impossible to make out an end or a beginning. Madi tells me the light source is a film projector, projecting images of the threads back at you. It’s designed to confuse and disorientate, I believe, but I found the whole sculpture strangely therapeutic.
I met with Madi yesterday and we chatted about her next project, where she will be collaborating with more neuroscientists and a human-computer interaction specialist. She’s interested, as she tells me, in how abstract environments and stimuli affect our emotions.
I’m also interested in where emotion, imagination, memory and empathy cross through images. When you look at an image, what emotions are triggered? How is that directed by the image maker, or is it a subjective experience?
There are a series of talks at the Photographers Gallery next month looking at aspects of photography and affect. They’ll be asking if the experience of looking at photographs can alter us emotionally and physically.
Jonathan Miles’s talk ‘Image, Gesture and Fiction’ looks interesting. More details here. Miles aims to explore the relationship between the poetic word and the image and as I’m currently putting together an audio-visual-textual piece, it’s particularly relevant for me.
Price: Free
Date and time: Thu 10 March, 18.30
Location: Downstairs at Yumchaa, 45 Berwick Street, London W1F 8SF
Posted 1 year ago with NotesTags: influences
