Shirley Renwick
Air: As Yet Unknown. An uncertain study into the edges of perception touching upon AI sculpture sound philosophy and physics

ABSTRACT

This artist based research is interested in air. I do not mean representations of air, but the reality of air itself – having agency, activity, reaction, aliveness, connection and emergence. This research embraces the unknown, unknowing and the unknowable in air, with gratitude to New Materialism, RCA Entanglement Seminars, Lucretius, Heidegger and Subatomic Particle Physics, as well as a collection of curious artists who have helped give vocabulary to this mist of ongoingness.

Any mention of participation, collaboration, event, gaze, found and happenings in this study are deliberate, and point to the overlooked agency of air in art.

Air presents multiple barriers for sculptors: Air is invisible, ephemeral, withdrawn, changeable, hidden. Traditionally in Western sculpture, air is mostly either displayed in reproductions, or as metaphor, as symbol. Or air is ignored, overlooked, taken for granted.

Today, a possible meeting point has emerged in advances in technology, discovery, thinking and artistic practice to allow a shift in the possibilities for perception of air in sculpture.

This study tries to begin to answer what might be discussed in how we perceive air, towards a practice of working with air. In structure it attempts to embody the intangibility of air - findings and clusters of insights scatter throughout the research along with documentation of artistic practice, and results of research experiments. While also offering a defence of uncertainty, ambiguity and unknowningness. In doing so it is making a case for seeking out the unsayable, the unknowable - all within the impossibility of translation of air.

In this practice-based research I present a sensitive sculptural experiment, activated by usually unheard sound and sensors – and crucially – in participation with air. The “expansive field” - an extension of the expanded field concept - is introduced in this report. This study sets up the conditions for a live sound performance by air, a discovery of found sound and connection with the unknown that is always already there.

This research embraces uncertainty and complexity, working with air to explore an overview perspective of:

Air as method. Air as network. Air as collaborator.

Key Words

Air, New Materialism, Perception, Sculpture, Becomingness, Infinity, Ongoingness, Flow, Lucretius, Heidegger, Emergence, Entanglement, AI, expansive field.

Biography

Shirley Renwick is an artist based in London who creates sensitive sculpture experiments and sound in multiplatform installations which participate with air. She investigates eco-acoustics, sub atomic science, the digital realm, and multiple forms of art. For Shirley, the posthuman, nonhuman and subhuman is relevant to aliveness in the current human position now. Her background is in live media and interactive music television. Her artistic qualifications include Foundation Slade, UCL, London; BA Fine Art (First Class Honours), Chelsea, University of the Arts London; MA Sculpture, Royal College of Art, London. She also has qualifications in programming code, journalism, psychology and politics, philosophy and economics. Her art has been shown at the Royal Academy of Art, the Great Exhibitionists at the Royal College of Music Museum, Tate Lates and Tate Exchange at Tate Modern London among other places.