Invisible Dust
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Leverhulme Award for Elizabeth Price’s space residency
© In mid-August 2010 ESO Photo Ambassador Yuri Beletsky snapped this photo at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. A group of astronomers were observing the centre of the Milky Way using the laser guide star facility at Yepun, one of the four Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT).
The Leverhulme Trust has just awarded one of its prestigious ‘Artist Residency Awards’ to artist Elizabeth Price to be the first ever artist in residence with the RAL Space laboratory. This residency has been planned by Invisible Dust with scientist Dr Hugh Mortimer and will start after Price’s exhibition at the BALTIC in Gateshead which opens on 10th February 2012.
Elizabeth Price whose artwork often recreates environments or draws from historical archives will be in residence with RAL Space Scientist Dr Mortimer and will spend time in his laboratory and in the RAL archive developing knowledge of his research into Space dust and satellite instrumentation. Dr Mortimer’s work encompasses developing cutting edge Earth observation satellite systems to enable us to understand climate change, one of the most interesting and controversial areas of science
Price will use the residency to explore the metaphorical, formal and technical parallels between her artistic work and Dr Mortimer’s space research.
Writers, artists and filmmakers from H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke to Stanley Kubrick have been inspired by space and our place in the Universe. Many other Space research organisations have created artists’ residencies such as NASA’s space programme; which has included artists Laurie Anderson and Tomas Saraceno.
Invisible Heat
We are planning a schools and outreach programme to accompany Elizabeth Price’s residency at RAL. Invisible Heat provides young people with an imaginative and stimulating way of engaging with Space science through Dr Hugh Mortimer’s research.
Dr Mortimer’s research has been instrumental in the deployment of the SISTeR (Scanning Infrared Sea Surface Temperature Radiometer) instrument, on the Queen Mary 2 cruise ship which was installed in 2010. The SISTeR measurement is being used to validate measurements of sea surface temperature from satellites such as the RAL designed infrared radiometer flown on the Envisat spacecraft.
(See: http://www.stfc.ac.uk/RALSpace/Areas+of+expertise/Earth+Observation/19759.aspx )
Sea surface temperatures are a major measure of Climate Change and weather forecasts. The Queen Mary 2 is one of the world’s largest cruise ships and has the first on board planetarium. It docks at Southampton and then travels around the world. The young people will investigate infrared radiometers and their application and create an exhibition with artists to be shown initially in Southampton where the Queen Mary 2 docks, and then in ports across the UK.
