Spine
SPINE highlights the critical role that artists and scientists play in our understanding of the world, exploring ways in which academic disciplines establish a common language to share stories and pass on knowledge.
Spine was a site specific arts and science annual festival showcasing Lancasters globally significant research and arts.
The architects of the University designed The Spine so that it would follow the natural gradient of the land. This makes it the perfect platform for conversations between residents and visitors of the campus, and SPINE aims to spark these conversations and explore the fusion of arts and academic research.
Season I: a.r.t.i.c.u.l.a.t.e is a poetic response by J. R. Carpenter to the international research of Professor Adam Taylor. Anatomically speaking, humans the world over are much the same on the inside. Yet most of us know very little of the inner workings of our bodies. a.r.t.i.c.u.l.a.t.e uses the poetics of everyday language to articulate concepts in anatomy. How can large-scale sentences affixed to brick and glass walls on campus engage the walking body with the SPINE as a physical, textual, and conceptual space? How can a turn of phrase cause a body to pause for a beat, to consider anatomical structures such as limbs, lungs, blood and their functions in day to day things like drawing breath?
J. R. Carpenter is an international award-winning writer and interdisciplinary artist working across performance, print, installation, and digital media. Her pioneering works of digital literature have been presented in museums, galleries, and festivals around the world. Her digital poem The Gathering Cloud won the New Media Writing Prize 2018. Her poetry collection An Ocean of Static was highly commended by the Forward Prizes 2018. She was Artist in Residence in LICA at Lancaster University in November 2019.
Professor Adam Taylor is an international multi-award winning educator and researcher with extensive experience in local, national and international public engagement projects. He is currently leading the world's largest ever study on what people know about anatomy.
Season II: Patterns of the Universe featured artistic interventions by projectionist Nicola Rae and Lancaster-based pattern artist Bonnie Craig. Inspired by globally significant research from Lancaster University’s Physics department, Nicola Rae’s piece is an immersive sound specific digital projection that translates aurora observations into sound patterns. Bonnie Craig’s work is a collection of translucent pattern representations of the expanding universe, which, in the artist’s words, “also mimics ways in which people acquire and grow in knowledge. Space scientists and astrophysicists at Lancaster University advised the artists throughout the process. Professor Jim Wild, Professor of Space Physics, said: “In the Space and Planetary Physics research group at Lancaster, we study the planets in our solar system and the space environment that connects them to the Sun. We can learn enormously about the physics of the universe by studying the similarities, and differences, between common phenomena observed at the different planets in our solar system.’
