Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)
- Submitting institution
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Teesside University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- LS1
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- -
- Year of first exhibition
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Sillars’ research project triangulated media archaeology, museology and art history research methods, to investigate the distinctive visual conditions of liquid crystal display (LCD) screens.
The project output was two group exhibitions at Site Gallery, Sheffield (2018-2019) and MIMA, Middlesbrough (2019), and a book (ed. Site Gallery’s Sharna Jackson et al) including essays by Sillars and media theorists Jussi Parikka and Esther Leslie. The exhibition and publication were accompanied by a public programme of events exploring industrial infrastructure, magical machines and animation using biological materials.
Over two hundred object records were built in a database prior to the selection of 27 – 40 works for each venue. A freestanding hanging device/sculpture was commissioned from artist Anna Barham based on Donna Haraway’s idea that art allowed scientists to make ‘extra-logical’ leaps. Audience research was undertaken to understand how the exhibition informed them and this was used to re-formulate the exhibition for the second iteration.
Media archaeologists research technologies predating our current tools (Crary, 1992; Zielinski, 2008). This project researched early C.19th microscopical drawings of polarisation of light through crystals (Edinburgh National Gallery); John Ruskin’s crystals (Museums Sheffield) and The Dorman mineral collection, which serve as exemplars of the predecessors of liquid crystals. Crystals were collected and studied as mineral specimens, but also because they were beautiful and desirable as visual objects.
The world’s first curatorial practice-led research project to investigate LCDs using a media/geological and archaeological methodological approach meant the project was highly original. This project developed understanding into how the LCD’s polarisation of light, the quality of the colours produced, and the screen’s back-lit illumination transform visual material. The project has advanced the field of museum practice that draws on media archaeological methods. It was a case study in New Contemporaries 70th Anniversary Conference in collaboration with The Courtauld Institute (2019).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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