Seed Media Group: Blog

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #

Connecting places

Scottish, London-based artist Katie Paterson was our SeedAM speaker this morning.

Ever since she was a student at London’s Slade School of Fine Arts, Katie Paterson has teamed up with scientists and engineers to realize her ideas. For ‘Ancient Darkness’, her recent piece in the Performa festival, she collaborated with astronomers at the Mouna Kea Observatories; for Earth-Moon-Earth, where she transmitted the Moonlight Sonata from earth to moon and back to see what remained, she tapped in to the underground radio community.

With her work, Katie draws attention to nature or space phenomena from far away or long ago by connecting them to the here and now.

Today, Katie told us about when she submerged a microphone in the glacier Vatnajökul and set up a phone number you could call to hear it melt. She once designed a map of dead stars and manufactured 3000 light bulbs that emulate moonlight. Her next project is a pier in England that will flicker in cue with light storms all around the world.
“I’m planning to build a smaller window-version as well,” says Katie. “One you could take home.”
Another piece in the works employs nanotechnology. Katie is looking to make nano-sand.
“It will make ordinary sand grains look enormous,” she says.

‘All the dead stars’