Funded by The Wellcome Trust, this series was made as part of a 16-month collaboration with scientists from the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy and Cancer Research UK. The project explored the hidden worlds of the micro and macro dimensions and the sense of wonder they both inspire.

The project was a creative response to the ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration between the Institute of Astronomy and Cancer Research, where software initially developed to identify stars and galaxies was being used in response to the human body, to identify biomarkers and cellular change at a microscopic level.

As an intrinsic part of the project I worked closely with the philosopher Ezra Rubenstien to explore the context of our ideas.

As part of looking at the way we observe the world around us, I developed the use of luminescent pigments within the cast body of the glass. Lit by a slow-moving cycle of white light fading to total darkness, different aspects of the work were revealed at each stage.  

In Conversation with Ezra Rubenstien: On Scale

Humans have long been fascinated by their place in the world. The ongoing process of self-location is enacted simultaneously on two fronts: the very large and the very small. A gradual gathering of sensations from all sides forms a collective consciousness at the intersection of these scales: we listen to the crashing of the sea and the songs of crickets in the grass; we stare at the vast expanse of the sky above us and the grains of sand beneath our feet. In this search we do not so much locate ourselves as construct ourselves. The search for ourselves in our world is what makes us who we are.

Modern technology allows us to delve deeper in both directions. Particle colliders shatter reality into ever-smaller components, whilst telescopes probe ever-further into space and time. We find that these tools outlast our imagination: facts overtake fictions, and we start to produce stories which operate at the very limits of our minds. Through ever more refined lenses we catch glimpses of understanding; their curves cast mysterious shadows and reflections which hover somewhere between reality and dream.

In the search for other inhabited planets, automatic software analyses the images produced by our telescopes, looking for slight fluctuations in the incoming data. The same program can be applied to the images produced by microscopes, in order to classify cells instead of galaxies. This collaboration between cancer researchers and astronomers may seem unlikely, but it is the result of a natural overlap between projects conducted at both ends of the scale. Microscopes are trained downwards to explore samples of mouse skin and telescopes inspect the night’s sky in minute detail: each are lost in their own worlds, where structures exist only in relation to each other. Information is gathered photon by photon and reconstructed pixel by pixel. Enormous galaxies appear as points of light, whilst tiny cells reveal entire worlds.   

In fact, macro-structures and micro-structures mimic and reflect each other to such an extent that we begin to wonder whether scale is not linear but rather a circle that joins up somewhere beyond our comprehension. At each level of magnification new structure emerges so that, as we piece it together in our imagination, the universe begins to resemble a fractal pattern. As we peer into the glass, we do not know whether we are seeing galaxies or cells, clusters of molecules or of stars, the echoes of a supernova or the traces of an electron.

In the approach to infinity, upwards or downwards, forwards or backwards, inwards or outwards, are revealed to be useless and irrelevant questions. For it is the place you approach whichever direction you travel in, and which you never reach however far you go. It is the place where everything intersects. It is the still point.         

The work was exhibited in the observatory dome at the Institute of Astronomy as part of the Cambridge science festival.