unfolding thinking (2017)
- Submitting institution
-
Norwich University of the Arts
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- NUA-LB-01
- Type
- L - Artefact
- Location
- Norwich University of the Arts
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of production
- -
- Year of production
- 2017
- URL
-
https://nua.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/17337
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
C - Pattern and Chaos
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Bicknell undertook a year-long residency at the Nano Doctoral Training Centre, Cambridge University in 2016-17 (Arts Council England and ESPRC funded). 'unfolding thinking' sought to extend understanding between cutting edge science and contemporary art, specifically making connections between nanotechnology and the making of bookworks.
The art and science project embedded the artist within the new Maxwell Centre at Cambridge University working within the laboratories, engaging with research students to generate a body of new artwork informed by research in nanotechnology. Bicknell recognised similarities, explored possible confluence and developed connections by researching and deconstructing the physical and theoretical concerns of scientists working in nanotechnology research within the framework of an artist’s practice and creative thinking. Key research concerns were the development of material used in relationship to the possibilities afforded by manipulated structural models that map movement with specific reference to affordance.
Bicknell observed that scientists use unconscious hand gestures to explain and communicate complex scientific concepts and lab processes. He started to map these by drawing and filming them, and generated a series of articulated bookworks and films that were conceived as tools for thinking; folds and images of folds create their own narrative which is unfolded through thought. Bicknell documented
his research and the development of this work in a number of sketchbooks and on a dedicated blog. https://unfoldingthinking.blogspot.com/
The residency resulted in over 400 individual outcomes: objects, prints, bookworks, films and site-specific interventions at The Maxwell Centre. There is a permanent exhibition in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy. Two exhibitions each of six months duration showed over 200 objects at the Cavendish Museum, Department of Physics. Works in the series have subsequently been exhibited and
presented at a number of venues and conferences.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
