The Arts Catalyst

 

This week we have a Folded Wing inspiration from Eliza…

“Wednesday night I could have quite easily been on planet Jupiter, whilst actually in an airy room in Clerkenwell, due to the wonderful organisation The Arts Catalyst. The Arts Catalyst are an organisation that provide a crucial link between the often polar opposite worlds of science and art, as they commission artwork that engages with science.

Last night, the theme was Microgravity: it started with an aspirational astronaut and ended with us listening to transcendental free-jazz outer-space band leader Sun Ra. How did this happen? The Arts Catalyst actually took artists into conditions of outer space with zero gravity, and they came back to tell their experiences.

In Russia, Kitsou Dubois and Dragan Zivadinov made flying in microgravity possible for artists. If chosen, they could step upon parabolic aircrafts which go through phases of around 25 seconds where there is zero gravity. We watched a video of inside the aircraft, and it genuinely looked like a sci-fi film where people float about airlessly. Some of the artists even took carpets with them so it looked like they were riding magic carpets!

Ssome of the artists and scientists involved relayed their experiences inside the aircraft for us last night, and it was fascinating to hear what’s been going through their minds since experiencing microgravity.

Edward George and Anna Piva (Flow Motion) actually recorded the sounds inside the aircraft and played them to us – and they totally betrayed the idyllic feeling nature of the film as what it sounded like inside the aircraft was actually just intensely loud noise! Going from that to playing Sun Ra to us made complete sense, as hearing the spatial sounds of free jazz after having heard a whole night of zero-gravity tales somehow summed everything up perfectly.

Here’s a video of the night for those that missed it…

And there’s loads of amazing talks coming up at The Arts Catalyst, keep an eye out!”

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